The Garden

Chaos.  Everybody was running here and there. It is no wonder the stories got mixed up. Some thought they saw Peter and John go into the tomb, some thought they had not arrived yet. Some saw angels, or something that looked like angels. Some saw the guards lying facedown and scrambling up with worried looks and making hasty decisions of what to tell the authorities.

“Where is he?” You can hear the determination in her voice as Mary Magdalene confronts someone she thinks is the gardener. “Just tell me where he is and I WILL GO GET HIM!” This is not some weak woman speaking. She has come to the tomb prepared to roll away a heavy stone, but now all she sees is a gaping hole and the body of Jesus is gone. She is crying, yes, but these are tears of frustration and determination. She was going to make this right. Weak people say “help me” while strong people say “I will do it.”

“Tell me where he is! I will go get him!”

Chaos. So many different accounts of this one event. But there was one thing they all were clear on. It was a woman who Jesus first revealed himself to.

There were men around – the guards who were scared half to death – and possibly Peter and John. But they didn’t get the news. It was a woman. Like all of Jesus’ proclamations, male headship played no part in this resurrection story.

So we have finally arrived in the garden and the world has been turned upside down.  Where do we go from here?  Do we leave Mary and the other women beside an empty grave? Yes, we do. Not as Jesus did, but as pastors and preachers and other women have determined we should do. Mary Magdalene is mentioned 12 times in relation to Jesus’ death and resurrection. After that she is no longer mentioned. Why not? This woman to whom Jesus made a personal appearance – bypassing all the others around the tomb – is left there.

Today I was sitting in a doctor’s office while both men and women sat around me, using their iPhones or devices. Tears came into my eyes and I wanted to shout to all there “This is the 21^st Century for both men and women! Why does the church work so hard to keep women in the 1^st Century?” Because the Bible says so? Where?

Where does Jesus say that women must submit to their husbands? Where does Jesus say that women can’t be in authority over a man? It is not there, my friends. We are called Christians because we follow Christ and not some 1^st century societal customs that empowered men over women.

We have come to the garden by way of Mary of Bethany who was a Jewish woman welcomed to sit and learn from the Master himself. We have come to the garden by way of the Gentile woman who learned that Jesus was the Messiah for gentiles which included her. We have come to the garden by way of the Samaritan woman who believed that hers was the true religion, and here was the Messiah just as they expected. We have come to the garden by way of Mary Magdalene who declared she would go herself and find Jesus until he said her name and she knew he was the resurrected Christ.

We are at the garden. Who is going to stop you from going and telling?

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

Lent. Part 4. Destination, the Garden

If the first thing you think of when you remember the woman at the well is “the man you are living with now is not your husband,” then you have missed the whole point of Jesus’ visit to this Samaritan woman.

The Danvers Statement Affirmation #9 says: “With half the world’s population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism; with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel; with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world.”

No matter what shape the world is in, the writers of The Danvers Statement would never have chosen the woman at the well to be the instrument God used to win lost people to Christ.

But Jesus did.

Everyone knows her story. In fact, hers is one of the longest detailed stories of an event in the New Testament. It was her story. She told it to everyone who would listen. This man she had just met at the well knew that she had had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband.

Jesus was not judging her for that. He was offering her something that no man could offer a woman. He was offering her living water—from a well that would never run dry. And he told her that he was the source of this living water.

This was a woman experienced in the ways of men, and she knew this conversation was different from any she had ever had. She was certainly not the one who would be expected to announce the news that prophecy had been fulfilled and that the long-awaited Messiah had finally arrived. No one would even listen to a woman proclaiming this momentous event, would they? But for some reason, Jesus chose her to reveal his true identity.

She took that message and ran with it.

It was Jesus who brought up the subject of living water. He told her that if she drank from the water he gave, she would never be thirsty again.

She wanted that. She said she did not want to keep coming to the well to draw water. She was probably teasing him at that point as she had no idea what he was talking about. Then Jesus did something surprising. He told her to go call her husband, and then to come back.

Aha! Finally Jesus brings male headship into the conversation! “Go, call your husband and come back,” Jesus said.

The woman answered, “I have no husband.”

Was Jesus was surprised at this? Did he ask her to go call her husband just to embarrass her?  No, its significance is greater than her confession that she was not married to the man with whom she was living. She was worthy in her own right, as a woman, to be told directly by him that he was the Messiah. They engaged in a theological discussion. This woman was not learning in silence. And Jesus did not rebuke her for it. She talked back and told him that she could see that he was a prophet. She declared “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

And he did explain—right then and there—to the woman at the well, a woman who did not have a husband to tell her if what she was hearing was right or wrong. She heard, she accepted, she told.

This story of the woman at the well is found in John 4:4-42 and begins by saying, “Now he had to go through Samaria.” It is best translated that “he purposed in his mind” to go through Samaria, because the Jews had found a way, even though it was inconvenient, to avoid Samaria. They thought they were better than these poor cousins, the Samaritans, and for a Jew to deliberately go through Samaria was unusual.

There was something in Samaria that Jesus needed to do in order to complete his earthly work.

With this story of the Woman at the Well, we see how the picture of Jesus is coming together.

• The Jewish woman, Mary of Bethany, who Jesus permitted to sit at his feet right beside the men, and learn at a time when learning scripture was forbidden to women
• The Gentile woman to whom Jesus revealed that he was not sent only to Israel, but to all people, which included her
• The Samaritan woman to whom Jesus revealed that he was the Messiah, who the Samaritans were also expecting, since they claimed theirs was the true religion of the ancient Israelites.

These are pivotal stories because they show that Jesus gives the voice of the gospel to women just as he gives the voice of the gospel to men. These stories also set the stage for the empty tomb where it was women who first encountered the resurrected Jesus and where the full gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus would unfold. So, yes, Jesus purposed in his mind to go through Samaria, because he had something to complete in Samaria.

The completion of this mission was so satisfying to him that he told his disciples, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” The conversation he had with this woman had an effect on Jesus that was profoundly different from his other encounters with men or women. This is the only scripture passage in the Bible where Jesus said that what had just happened was so meaningful to him that he felt that he had been fed. In other words, mission accomplished.

Verse 42 says “…we no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” These men first heard the words of Jesus from a woman, and then they heard the same message from Jesus himself.

Jesus is headed to the garden tomb and the final meeting with a woman who steps into the Christian era with the news “He is risen!”

It is 2024 What will you do? 

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

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Lent. Part 3. Destination the Garden

There are four women to whom Jesus tells that he is the Messiah, the Canaanite woman being one of them. Most often we hear of her great faith, but when we concentrate on the faith of this woman, we diminish the message Jesus gave her. She was given the news from Jesus himself that he not only came for the Jews, but for the Gentiles also – and that meant her. Her story is found in both Matthew and Mark.

She asked Jesus to heal her daughter, but for some reason, he was not going to do it.  Jesus told her “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.” She was a Gentile, and Jesus was telling her that he was sent to save the Jews only. But if that was the case, I wouldn’t be here writing this and you wouldn’t be reading it. So we see that while Jesus said that, it did not tell the whole story. And then by healing her daughter, he is showing her that he is also the Messiah of the Gentiles. That is Big News! We must never forget that this extraordinary news was told to a woman who had no husband nearby, or possibly not at all.

But right now, this woman did not need some idealistic prophecy of what was to happen in the future. Her daughter lay in bed very ill and she needed help now. So she argued with this man Jesus in whom she had placed her hope. ‘Help my daughter! Surely you have enough power within you to give a small portion to us Gentiles.’

 But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.”  He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.” Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. (Common English Bible)

This story is very similar to the story of the first miracle when Jesus turned the water into wine. His mother (remember she had first argued with the angel Gabriel when told she was going to have a baby who would be the Messiah?) In the Wedding story Jesus says almost the same thing to his mother as he says to the Canaanite woman.

When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.” Jesus replied, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.” His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Nearby were six stone water jars used for the Jewish cleansing ritual, each able to hold about twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim.  Then he told them, “Now draw some from them and take it to the headwaiter,” and they did.  The headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. (Common English Bible)

Just as his mother had asked for a special favor “even though the time was not right,” Jesus did as she asked. He does the same with this Gentile woman, showing that his right time had no beginning or ending.

Jesus told women his Good News, and he did not tell any one of those women to go home and ask her husband, brother, or father what he meant. He did not tell any one of these women not to tell the Good News of the Messiah. If he had, we would have never heard these stories. The Gentile woman went home and found her daughter healed. The disciples didn’t see that ending. She told it to whoever would listen.

It is 2024. What stories are you telling about your relationship with Jesus?

 www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

All You’ll Ever Be is Mean

Weighing in on Taylor Swift.

Meanness – an old-fashioned word for a modern situation. Meanness is a word we do not use much anymore. We rarely say a person is mean, but it was a common expression many years ago. We all knew what it meant. Mean was what you were when you did something that you knew beyond a doubt that it would hurt somebody, but you did it anyway.

Taylor Swift, country music singer, wrote a song about mean that was very popular. The song is about a bully, and we can relate very well to it because those who preach and teach male headship are bullying women. Her song is titled “Mean.”

“Someday I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Someday I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?”

It’s time to bring out that word again and use it against those who teach hierarchy, patriarchy, male headship, and male leadership. Those teachings are designed to denigrate women. They are also designed to puff up men.

Many years ago, everyone was concerned with WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? We asked ridiculous questions such as what kind of car Jesus would drive and numerous other trivialities. We didn’t ask if Jesus would write books promoting male leadership over women, or if He would write comments underneath blogs on the Biblical meaning of certain scriptures that would limit women using their spiritual gifts for leadership over men and women, or if he would invite a woman to preach at his weekly church.

We did not ask if Jesus would preach on Sunday morning that women had an obligation to graciously submit to their husbands because by doing so, they would be submitting to Jesus himself.

So here we are today with seminars, blogs, books, movies, sermons, discussions, Bible Studies, and the list goes on, extolling God’s so-called grand design that women are to submit to their husbands, and to all males in a church.

That is mean. That is unmitigated meanness. That is getting pleasure from hurting someone.

Today as I drove home there were two small turtles crossing the road. I pulled over to the side and let them slowly make their way across the street.

It would have been mean to have deliberately attempted to drive over those little turtles. You know it and I know it. It is not something that I would do, but throwing rocks at turtles sunning by a pond is something that was done years ago by young boys.

These boys have grown up and now they are throwing rocks at women. Just for the fun of it. They could leave us alone. They could help us across the street. They could at least pull over and allow us to cross to the other side unmolested.

But they prefer to write blogs, preach sermons, hold complementarian marriage seminars, and gig us in their meanness.

Do they really believe the Bible teaches that men are designed to be leaders over women?

If you are tired of mean boys who have grown up and are still throwing rocks just for the fun of it, will you speak up? Will you get your head out from under your shell and demand the right to cross the street, to preach, to be who God called you to be, without rocks being thrown at you?

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

Lent Part 2. Destination the Garden

Jesus is headed to the garden, this time to the garden tomb of Lazarus, where something very important is about to happen. There is to be a resurrection, a small demonstration of what is to come.

It is a familiar story. You know it well. You know Lazarus died, Jesus wept, Lazarus came forth from the tomb. And you know that Martha and Mary were at odds with each other because Martha needed help in the kitchen and Mary was sitting down and not helping.

“Just the facts, ma’am.” But every story has a back story and that story is most often ignored because the significance doesn’t fit with today’s male headship teaching.

Mary and Martha are the sisters of Lazarus. Apparently they live together. But it is not Lazarus who appears to be the head of the household, it is Martha. The stories in the Gospels do not attribute one word spoken by Lazarus, either before his death or afterwards. He does nothing to indicate he is the “head” of this family. Jesus speaks and interacts with Mary and Martha, and even this resurrection of Lazarus is overshadowed by Jesus’ talking with Martha, and his special notice of Mary.

Most of the people Jesus comes into contact with have only one story recorded in the Gospels. But Mary and Martha have at least four stories about their encounter with Jesus. When we first find Mary and Martha, Mary is at the feet of Jesus and Martha is fussing in the kitchen.

Mary was learning from the Teacher himself which was an enormously big deal in that time. It was said that for women to be taught the scriptures from men was similar to teaching them about sex – it just was not done. But here Mary is sitting at the Master’s feet alongside the men.

She is also the same Mary who, six days after the resurrection of her brother Lazarus, pours expensive alabaster oil on Jesus’ feet and dries his feet with her hair. Jesus rebukes those who seek to stop her by saying she is wasting the oil that could be sold to help feed the poor. He tells them “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”(Matthew 26:11-13).

Mary and Martha send for Jesus, but he waits until Lazarus is completely dead (it was believed by some Jews that the spirit hung around for three to seven days after death). It is Martha who runs to Jesus when he arrives after Lazarus’ death. If he had only gotten there earlier, Lazarus would have been healed but here he was dead and in the tomb and stinking for four days.

The bible makes the point that “ when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, while Mary remained in the house.” Mary remained at the house with the neighbors who came to comfort her. We know that Lazarus’ death and resurrection is one illustration Jesus wants to make, and we are going to see that there is one more connection to be made.

Here it is:

“After she said this, she went and spoke privately to her sister Mary, “The teacher is here and he’s calling for you.” Jesus was headed to the tomb where Lazarus lay but it was important that Mary who had a hungering for the Scriptures and the things to come, be there when he brought Lazarus forth from the tomb. Thus, he said six days later, “she has prepared me for my burial.”

Just the facts, ma’am. Women had gone every step of the way with Jesus. They did not abandon him at the time of his trial; they did not deny him. Jesus is headed toward the tomb where at least two Marys will be the first to see him after his resurrection.

It is 2024. Jesus has been resurrected and the New Day dawned over 2,000 years ago. Are you still denying women equality in your church or in your home?

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

Lent Part 1. Destination The Garden

You see, it began with the Garden of Eden and it culminated in the Garden of the Tomb and with the resurrection. That is no coincidence. And it is no coincidence that a woman was the one who was there when the Lord was revealed.

It was all leading up to that, of course, but they didn’t see it and I can bet your pastor doesn’t see it either. The scriptures pointing the way have been used for other illustrations if they are mentioned at all. Rarely will you hear a sermon on the four women Jesus chose to lead the way.

But first, we must go back to that first Garden. This is a story the Jewish leaders and every household knew very well, just as we Christians know it and teach our children.

Man and woman were banned from the Garden. The man was to till the soil and the woman was to give life. Her name was now Eve which means “life” or “life-giving, or “mother of all who have life.”

Tears come into my eyes for all the Eves of the world. Eve wanted knowledge. She would be the one giving birth to future generations, but those same sons and daughters would curse her. God did not curse her. He cursed the snake and the ground that would be tilled, but he did not curse the man or the woman.

In this series “Destination, the Garden” we will see how Jesus, the “second Adam” demonstrates redemption to the woman. And we will learn that yet, again, those sons and daughters still curse the woman who gave them life.

It is 2024. Are you still cursing the woman who gave you life? 

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

Advent Love – Its Personal

Franklin Graham had it wrong in 2016. God did not intervene in the selection of the president. Jesus was not concerned about governments, either Jewish or Roman. Jesus was concerned about the heart of the people. As we know from history, the heart of the people can be very hard and unforgiving, lacking justice and mercy. It is doubtful that God would have given this as a Christmas present to us.

In a few days, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. At the time of Jesus’ birth, the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would bring the kingdom of God to earth.

The great hope of Israel centered in the kingdom of God which would change the course of history by inaugurating the period of justice, peace and prosperity announced by the prophets, the more strenuously since the bitter experience of the deportation to Babylon. (The Jewish world at the time of Christ)

They wanted justice, peace and prosperity. Who doesn’t want that? The problem with wanting justice and peace is twofold: 1) we want to determine what justice is; 2) we want to determine what peace is.

When I think of justice, I immediately think of women’s equality and how women have been mistreated, marginalized, abused, and discounted by government and by religion, and how that continues today. I think of homosexuals who have also suffered greatly and still do. So it is with trepidation that I look at our newly evangelically-voted for government. The people chosen to represent the nation have a history of misogyny against women and hatred against homosexuals. Justice?  I see no way to justice.

When I think of peace, I think of living peacefully in our own country. My children were born during the great Civil Rights demonstrations and conflict. I was fearful for my children being born in such an unsettling time. As a mother, I desire peace. Sure, there are times I would like to get even, strike back, and win above all. But as a mother whose son has gone into a battleground in Iraq, I don’t want to see other mothers suffer during wars. So, yes, I desire peace.

Jesus did not come to change Jewish government or Roman government or the United States government. He came to change the hearts of people. Through love. He said it himself “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love – it’s personal.

2023 is coming to an end. What did you do this year to promote love towards people? Did your heart change in thinking about women’s equality or gay rights? The two are tied together, you know. Because when we feel we can hate one group because the Bible says so, then we can restrict the other group because “the Bible says so.”

Street Evangelist for Women’s Equality
www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Ed.

Advent Joy – Hunger for God

We are in the third week of Advent, which is Joy. Sunday a pink candle will be lit for preparation of the birth of the little boy who would become the Christ. It is fitting that we read the Magnificat. Elizabeth had just told Mary that the baby she carried in her own womb leaped for joy when Mary came into her home, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”

And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” (Luke 1:46-55 NIV)

The Jews yearned for a Savior, and I imagine each had his or her own expectations of what that Savior would look like. I have heard that at each wedding, they expressed wishes that the new couple would bring forth that baby boy. We should not be surprised then, when we learn that a couple who had not yet consummated their marriage would be the bearer of that baby.

But let’s go back to Mary’s words. “He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” Before Jesus is even showing in the womb, Mary told us what he would do.

This is not about money at all.  It is about their spiritual condition.

So exactly what did Mary say?

She said that those who hunger for God will be filled, but those who think they are already rich in the knowledge of God will be turned upside down and the money they hold in their pockets (what they think they know about God) will fall out on the floor.

Or, as Jesus said in Matthew 23: 23, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”

God, I pray that those who are filled with their own sense of righteous riches and who claim to know that you favor males for your kingdom work, will have their eyes opened to Justice, mercy, and faithfulness to you.

(reposted from December 2013).

www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Ed

Advent Hope – Groundhog Day all over Again

Each year the liturgical calendar gets reset and we begin again with where it began. We know what is going to happen to Jesus at Easter, but each December we begin by retelling the story from the beginning, all over again.  We get a new chance like Phil the weatherman did in the movie Groundhog Day. We hope this year we get it right.

Phil (Bill Murray), a weatherman, is out to cover the annual emergence of the groundhog from its hole. He gets caught in a blizzard that he didn’t predict and finds himself trapped in a time warp. He is doomed to relive the same day over and over again until he gets it right. After indulging in hedonism and committing suicide numerous times, he begins to re-examine his life and priorities.

Like Phil, Christianity has been through its periods of hedonism and suicidal tendencies. In its hedonistic period, Christians have tried to force Christianity down the throats of others by the Crusades. Christians have murdered thousands during the Inquisitions, witch hunts, slavery, and sent others to hell by preaching hell and brimstone revivals in the United States.

Today we are in Christianity’s suicidal period. We are killing the hearts and desires of Christians and non-Christians alike with our hate for our fellow man.  Right now many people are declaring they no longer want to be called an evangelical Christian because the very term indicates that we are a restrictive, non-loving Christian whose desires should rule our government and churches. A nation that has chosen for president a man who either assaults women or who speaks as an adolescent boy who brags of doing so and who has actually had assault charges filed against him by his wife and others, along with 91 criminal indictments after his presidency.

In this suicidal period of Christianity, we have renewed our desire that women be controlled by husbands, men of the church, and all males. It is women who get the kids up for church each Sunday morning. It is women who will take their children to church and who do most of the Sunday school teaching in that church. It is women who are beginning to realize that their church does not love them as much as they love their church. When you kill off the ones who bring the children, you have committed religious suicide.

Such as our world has always been, it is now. But here we are. Beginning another Advent season where we are looking forward to the birth of a Baby who we will learn has come to turn the world upside down.  A Savior, the Christ, who will reveal to us that we are to love one another.

It is Advent – Groundhog Day all over again. We can hope.

It is 2023. What hope are you bringing to the church?

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Biblical Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Ed.

Sunday Morning Escapism

Church on Sunday morning we put aside our family problems, go to Bible Study, and enter into Bible World. 

For a few minutes each week, we escape from the real life where we live and live in the past and try to solve their problems of thousands of years ago.  That was a long time ago, and nothing like what we live in today. Sure, they treated women awful and we know the Patriarchs had multiple wives, but that was Then.  We don’t live that way today.  

Or do we?  

We need to get our heads out of the sand.  The majority of Baptists and other Christians have no idea what is being taught and practiced in the real world around them. 

Their church libraries don’t tell them.  Their pastor won’t tell them.  Their Sunday school teacher will stick to the book and either doesn’t know, or won’t bring up the subject.  

The members remain ignorant.  Studying Leviticus or the Gospels, and keeping their heads in Bible World.  Completely unaware of the abuse in Christian homes, the Quiverfull theology, the patriarch movement, the Danvers Statement, who the Council on Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood is, nor how it affects them. 

It does affect them.  They just don’t know it.  They don’t know that when their pastor tells them to submit to her husband, that he is quoting the mantra of the Danvers Statement; or when a woman tells her pastor that her husband wants her to have 10 kids, and she doesn’t, she is told that her husband is the leader of the family and if he wants her to have 10 kids, she is to do it. 

It affects them when their girls and boys are taught by their youth director who has been to a seminary that adopted the Danvers Statement.  It will affect their girls who are told that the boys are to be the leaders and that they can never be a deacon or a pastor. 

It affects them when their boys are told that all women, their girlfriends included, are created to be in submission to males. It affects them when their daughters suffer abuse even after submitting to her husband.

You, and every Christian, can be affected by the Danvers Statement, as is practiced and preached. 

That is what you should be told in Bible Study.  

See and hear the speakers at the Seneca Falls 2 Conference where we issued a Demand for an Apology from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood.  Tell others that we are fighting for women’s equality.

http://vimeo.com/14824926

(I’ve been in Sunday School for 60 years and know what I am talking about.  Bible Study should be about how we are to live today, but we spend our time judging the Bible characters and situations of the past, because we don’t want the lessons to get too close to home.  And, truthfully, it is hard to apply Leviticus to our lives today, for who doesn’t have polyester hanging in their closets.)  

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raisng the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

  

Advent Peace – What did the angels know?

Every year at Christmas we look at the world situation and wonder if the angels knew what they were proclaiming when they said “Peace on earth, goodwill among men.” We are not sure exactly what the angels did say as it is interpreted in many ways. The NIV version says, “Peace to those on whom his favor rests.” That sounds Calvinistic, but in the name of goodwill, today we will let that pass.

Since that is so, and because I am not a scholar, but an ordinary person reading the scriptures, I choose to read this meaning into those old familiar verses: The angels came to earth announcing the birth of a savior who is Christ the Lord. In proclaiming his birth, they were saying that God is Peace and has come willingly to the earth to be among men, and that he brings with him goodwill (that is to say, he does not bring harm to them.)

We usually take those scriptures to mean that there would be no more wars and strife and all would be joy now that Christ was born. The angels did not say that all would be rosy now. They called him Peace, and because of the great joy they have with the Father, they knew Who was arriving and they expected us to have the same great joy (Luke 2:10-11).

I think the angels may have given us more credit than we are due.

2023 is drawing to a close. But as we celebrate Advent again this year, we see a new beginning, a new year to get it right. A new year for peace in the church where both men and women are equal children of God.

(originally published 2016)

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

All available on Amazon in Print and on Kindle

The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling

The sun had not yet risen on September 4, 2023, when Dad wakes up after a good night’s sleep. He doesn’t know it, but a Bible Study was just sent out to his local officials, his governor, his state and nationally elected officials, a Bible Study that is deliberately intended to affect his marriage. His wife gets up and starts breakfast and begins to get the kids off to school, and she gets ready to go to work.

Another hectic morning. The coffee maker quit working, and there is no warm water to shower with because the hot water heater is on the blink, and Janie left her lunch at home. Mom and Dad are leaving for their jobs with just enough time to get to work. On her break, Mom will run by the school and give Janie her lunch, call the plumber to repair the hot water heater, arrange for a day off to meet them, and then stop by Walmart on her way home to purchase a new coffee maker.

It doesn’t have to be that way, of course. Mom could be a stay-at-home wife and mother with plenty of time to take Janie her lunch, get a new coffee maker and arrange for the plumber to fix the hot water heater. And if religious fundamentalists (complementarians) have their way, that is what Christian women will be doing. All in the name of God and what they say that the Bible tells them.

That morning, unbeknownst to families across the United States, on September 4, 2023, state and local representatives, governors, congressmen, and international political figures received their weekly Bible Study from Capitol Ministries. This particular Bible Study was by Ralph Drollinger in which he was laying out the dangers of women working outside the home.

The Bible Study that was sent out to all those elected officials suggests that Dad may have been sleeping with the enemy who is acting upon the direction of the Devil.

“How to resist the schemes of the Devil” is the title and is published by 69 year old Ralph Kim Drollinger, an American clergyman and retired professional basketball player, and leader of the “White House Bible Study.” He lists three things under the heading Secular Humanism that elected officials must guard against and how the United States must resist against Satan: 1. Same-sex marriage, #2. Women’s Liberation, #3. The New Morality.

Number 2 on his list tells governmental officials that women who are working outside the home are playing into Satan’s scheme to destroy the family and the United States.

#2. Women’s Liberation

“Satan knows that if he can get women out of their intended complementary role to their husbands that he will own the next generation. And that is exactly what is happening in America today. Children desperately need their moms’ attention so that they are not hooked by Satan’s schemes of drugs, sex, slothfulness among other sins, in their formative years, which then often destroy their later productive years. The Women’s Liberation movement largely disconnects God’s plan for child incubation and catechism. Again, if Satan can destroy the family, he can destroy the nation.”

Drollinger is saying that wives are to be submissive to their husbands, (complementary role) have a brood of kids (incubation), stay at home with the kids (Mom’s attention), and teach them how to be Christians (catechism), and if wives do not do that, Satan will come into families and will destroy the family and will also destroy the nation.

WOW! Mom, you have the whole world in your hands. Other than fathering the kids, what responsible part does Dad play in this imagined scenario? What if he wants Mom to work? Who is listening to the Devil now?

Is your married daughter listening to Satan when she works outside the home, or is she helping with finances in her home, and using her God-given abilities, education, and talents to do so? Perhaps she a single mother doing the best she can to make ends meet.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Drollinger why you, your daughter, or your wife works outside the home. What matters to Drollinger is that he claims that women are listening to the Devil when they step outside the home to work. And by listening to the Devil they are destroying families, marriages, and civilization.

Located in Washington, D.C., Capitol Ministries’ long-term vision is to create 200 ministries in 200 foreign nations; 50 ministries in 50 state capitols; ministries to all three branches of government in Washington, D.C.; and 10,000 ministries in 40,000 neighborhoods across America.

Take a moment to think about this. What do they want the United States government, and your local government, and international governments to do about the Devil coming into your home via your working wife? Do they want all women to quit working for pay? What laws will they support being made to bring this about? How does this affect your family? Perhaps this is the Devil you should be worried about.

Ralph Drollinger is bolstered in this belief that the Devil is out to destroy civilization through your working wife by Dr. Wayne Grudem, the architect of the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood that was introduced to the world of Christianity in 1987. It was accepted by all Southern Baptist seminaries, both Baptist and non-denominational churches, and other faith based entities. It is the defining statement of faith by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).

A quick look at the website of the Bible Study shows us what Grudem thinks of this Bible Study: “I am happy to support the excellent work of Ralph and Danielle Drollinger and Capitol Ministries.” Well, I guess he would be glad, since it reflects what is listed on the CBMW website.

Beginning Chapter of my latest book: The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
Available on Amazon in Print and Kindle
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
From Wife to Widow: What I know Now
Beyond the Grave: A Christian Dilemma
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

The Church no longer answers as Peter did

The sermon was from Luke 9:20 and as the members of First Baptist Church filed out, I am sure most were in complete agreement with Peter’s answer. At least they thought they were.

But I had a different understanding during the sermon. I, too, have heard this sermon many times, but this time it struck a different note with me. I realized that the answer Peter gave is what most think they would say, but most people sitting in that church have let the church tell them something else entirely different about who Jesus is.

The people were confident in their belief that they would answer as Peter did. But this church, like most SBC churches, is known by its by-laws, its organization, and its mission in the exclusion of women from pastoring, preaching, or even being a servant deacon, and they cannot answer like Peter did. In fact, most Southern Baptist churches and members cannot answer this question like Peter did, because they have redefined what “Christ of God” means.

1. Southern Baptist churches have accepted the current sexual definition of Jesus as being represented by the husband in families. Mary Kassian, an influential Southern Baptist speaker, said “I will long to unite with my husband physically (have sex) to symbolically honor my spiritual longing for Christ.”
2. Southern Baptist churches have demoted Christ to the point that He shares headship with husbands. Baptist Faith and Message 2000: Article XVIII of the BF&M states, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”
3. Southern Baptist churches have allowed husbands and pastors to supersede the gospel. If the words in 1 Timothy are absolute that women cannot teach men, then husbands cannot change that prohibition simply by their presence or agreement that their wife can teach males. As reported in Baptist Press News: “While some believe 1 Timothy 2:12 and related passages prohibit women from teaching the Bible to any coed adult group in the church, others say “a woman can teach a mixed audience as long as she does so under the ‘headship’ and authority of the pastor/elders and her husband.”

Let’s look back at Luke 9:20. Jesus had just asked his disciples “Who do people say that I am?” They had answered with ‘Elijah, John the Baptist, or one of the other prophets.’ But the people had it wrong. Jesus was none of these.

Then Jesus asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Luke 9:20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”

• Is Jesus the ‘husband having sex’ as Mary Kassian claims?
• is Jesus the ‘co-head of women’ as the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 says?
• is Jesus willing to let men ‘change the rules by their presence and word’ as many complementarians believe?

If husbands are in the ruling line of authority, this would make Jesus a wife’s Father-in-law.

 What about you? Who do you say Jesus is? Is Jesus the Christ in God, or is he your Father-in-law?

This post is a repeat of my November 13, 2015 post. Websites are no longer posting the material.

http://www.shirleytaylor.net
The Biblical Marriage Myth: The Devil Comes Calling (available in Kindle; will be available in print on 11/12/2023.
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2nd Edition

How complementarians make little-man gods. Conclusion. Part 9

Many scriptures in the Bible cannot be understood as written. But one scripture, 1 Timothy 2:15, has theologians, seminary professors, and pastors creating a separate step that women must take in order to enter into heaven. Men can simply ask for forgiveness for their sins and accept Jesus Christ as their savior. But certain complementarian Christian leaders are introducing a new element into salvation for women. So great is their desire to keep women subordinate, that they have reached into salvation itself and changed the way women are saved.

“But women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety” (1Timothy 2:15).

Bruce Ware, a founder and prominent member of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and a professor of Christian Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where Al Mohler is president, uses this scripture to change the way women accept Christ as their savior. What Ware says is shocking and you must read it carefully. Look for two things: 1) that women cannot become Christians (submit to God) until they accept the fact that they are not men; 2) Ware’s elevation of earthly men by putting a man as a factor in a woman’s salvation.

Read Ware’s words in the following interview as reported by Bob Allen, then a reporter for ethicsdaily.com. Allen quoted Ware when Ware spoke at a church in Denton, Texas:

“Ware also touched on a verse from First Timothy saying that women “shall be saved in childbearing,” by noting that the word translated as “saved” always refers to eternal salvation. “It means that a woman will demonstrate that she is in fact a Christian, that she has submitted to God’s ways by affirming and embracing her God-designed identity as—for the most part, generally this is true—as wife and mother, rather than chafing against it, rather than bucking against it, rather than wanting to be a man, wanting to be in a man’s position, wanting to teach and exercise authority over men,” Ware said. “Rather than wanting that, she accepts and embraces who she is as woman, because she knows God and she knows his ways are right and good, so she is marked as a Christian by her submission to God and in that her acceptance of God’s design for her as a woman.” (originally located on the ethics daily website but no longer available)

We remember that in Genesis 3:4, Satan tempted Eve with the fruit by telling her that God knew that their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil. God was the ultimate Being, there was none like God. Now Ware claims that women want to be men and I find his comments very disturbing.

Ware says that women’s salvation depends upon their denouncing their desire to be men. In this way, Ware has elevated men on earth to the status of God on earth. This doctrine diminishes God and elevates man to the status of earth-gods. In addition, Ware is claiming that women are still seeking to be as God just as the serpent said in the Garden of Eden (only now it is an earthly man-god that Ware claims women desire to be). My message to these complementarians: It is not women who desire to be God.

Ware is not the only seminary professor who subscribes to the belief that women must first bow to human males before they can be saved. James (Jim) Hamilton, Professor of Biblical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) where Bruce Ware is a professor, says the same thing as Ware. Before coming to SBTS, Hamilton served as Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Houston campus and was the preaching pastor at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. This connects two major Southern Baptist affiliated theological seminaries with Ware’s theology.

Hamilton says, “All women must embrace their role as women and bear children, and if they do so in faith they will be saved.” Hamilton continues, “And I agree with Schreiner and others on the point that Paul wants women to embrace what it means to be female, and he has chosen childbearing as an example of something that only women can do. This doesn’t mean that single women or barren women can’t be saved, but they should by faith embrace what it means for them to be women.”

Note that Hamilton says that a woman must be willing to embrace childbearing (what it means to be female). Thus, these words by Hamilton make a woman’s salvation dependent upon a human male, because it is only human male sperm that can impregnate a woman. Hamilton says the woman also has to put aside her so-called yearnings to be a male and accept the fact that she doesn’t measure up. That is so far away from Jesus, that it astonishes me that a professor who believes that way can teach in a Christian seminary. http://jimhamilton.info/2011/06/15/is-eve-a-type-in-1-timothy-215-some-thoughts-on-typology-and-biblical-theology/ June 15, 2011.

Not all complementarians believe that a woman must denounce her desire to be a man, and then have sex or be willing to, in order to be saved. Tom Challies is often quoted and he weighs in on 1 Timothy 2:15 by saying that the scripture means that women in general have been given the chance to redeem Eve’s sin by bearing children (have a baby and be good theology). Challies says, “There is good warrant to expand the word childbearing here so it points not just to the act of giving birth, but to all that Paul has just discussed a couple of verses earlier—godly womanhood. In the wider context of the passage Paul is referring to the whole of a woman’s calling within the family, within the church, within the world. She is to embrace godly womanhood, to be who and what God has created her and called her to be. She is to fight against that tendency to usurp authority that is not hers.” (“Saved through childbearing” June 7, 2011)

(They wonder why people have stopped going to church. Maybe it is because of this kind of ungodly theology!)

According to complementarians, Godly womanhood is totally dependent upon human males. It is solely a woman’s relationship to a man that determines whether or not she is exhibiting Godly womanhood. Depending upon which complementarian you believe, 1) women are saved by having a baby and denouncing their desire to be men; or, 2) women have a chance to redeem all mankind by having sex and giving birth to babies and not usurping authority from males (or at least have the desire to have sex with a man).

It appears that Ware, Hamilton, and Challies believe that a woman’s salvation is dependent upon the sex act by a man inserting his seed into the woman. If this is the case, then it is as if he has inserted his godliness (giver of salvation) into her; or if she has no male to have sex with (marriage does not come into the picture), she must be willing to have sex with a man (because sex is the way children are conceived), and it is only then that she, or mankind, can be saved.

The one thing all these men have overlooked is that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that would signify that men no longer would have saving power for women. Of course men never had saving power for women in the first place, but why let a few facts get in the way of demeaning women.

If they do not believe it this way, then why are they saying it? There is no justification for making such outrageous statements about women. There is no justification for making women’s salvation different from a man’s salvation. It is their desire to be man-god – the giver of salvation – that compels them to do this.

Can you imagine Jesus telling women that in order for them to be saved, they must denounce their desire to be men, and then be willing to have sex with a man?

Pastors, you who have studied the Word, do you have no understanding of what you are saying! How is it that you do not understand that in your desire to elevate man, you have diminished God? My soul, my heart, cries out for to you to repent. Do you not see your own desire to be God?

Exodus 20: 1-5 “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in Egypt. Do not worship any other gods besides me. Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. You must never worship or bow down to them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other god!”

Go back in this post and read what Bruce Ware said. Pay particular attention to the paragraph ‘Saved through childbearing’ that I have copied below.  This is what I have been talking about in my book Dethroning Male Headship, and Women Equal No-Buts: Powered by the same Source, and now this blog series, How complementarians make little man-gods.

Bob Allen says, “Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, suggests that “women will be saved through childbearing” in 1 Timothy 2:15 should be taken literally, noting the Greek word translated in the New Testament as “saved” always refers to eternal salvation.”

And there you have it! Little man-gods. God is the giver of life and salvation, and now Christian professors claim men have that same power.

Complementarians have given man this power over life (planting his seed) and salvation (saved thru childbearing because of that life-giving seed planted inside her).

And, by the way, if you believe what Bruce Ware says 1 Tim 2:15 means, you can forget all about the other ways Christians believe you can be saved, Calvinists included (which Bruce Ware is). The little man-god has you covered.

amazon.com/author/taylorshirley
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 8

Southern Baptists used to believe that salvation came about when a person, child or adult, man or woman, answered the urging of the Holy Spirit, and repented of their sins, which was called accepting Christ as their personal savior. This is better expressed as personally accepting Christ as their savior, because otherwise it sounds as if we have chosen Christ to be our valet.

This expression more than likely came about by Protestants who do not believe in infant baptism. However, the way it is said “accepting Christ as your personal savior” seems to indicate that Christ is yours, instead of the other way around. Personally accepting Christ affirms that you as an individual made the decision to follow Christ instead of your parents doing that for you.

What must I do to be saved? Acts 16:30-31 “He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”

About the time of Evangelism Explosion, the Sinner’s Prayer came into favor across the world, and forms of it were used by Billy Graham and Campus Crusade for Christ, and televangelists. (Remember, Evangelism Explosion’s author was Presbyterian.)

There is a Baptist megachurch near my home that I am familiar with so I went to their website to hear what he preached on last Sunday and to listen to his invitation for the congregation to get right with God because Jesus is coming soon (possibly because of the Hamas-Israel War that is taking place right now). He asked those who wanted to get right with God to pray with him what I recognized as being the Sinner’s Prayer.

Baptists along with other evangelicals, latched onto this method of bringing people to Christ. Pastors began asking those who came forward to accept Christ to say the Sinner’s Prayer. It was usually like this, “Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner and I do not deserve eternal life. But, I believe you died and rose from the grave to make me a new creation and to prepare me to dwell in your presence forever. Jesus, come into my life, take control of my life, forgive my sins and save me. I am now placing my trust in you alone for my salvation and I accept your free gift of eternal life.”

Baptists reaffirmed this prayer in June 2012 by this resolution, “We affirm that repentance and faith involve a crying out for mercy and a calling on the Lord (Rom. 10:13), often identified as a ‘Sinner’s Prayer,’ as a biblical expression of repentance and faith,” the resolution said.

But it added, “A ‘Sinner’s Prayer’ is not an incantation that results in salvation merely by its recitation and should never be manipulatively employed or utilized apart from a clear articulation of the gospel (Matt. 6:7; 15:7–9).”  This was added, in part at least, because David Platt, a Calvinist Southern Baptist, said that this prayer was superstition. Platt later became the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board from 2014 to 2017.

This prayer was brought to vote in 2012 because it was felt that the Sinner’s Prayer does not bow to Calvinism, and many fear that Calvinism is taking hold in Southern Baptist churches. A major disagreement is that Calvinists believe that God predetermines or predestines who will be saved, and the other half of Southern Baptists believes that each person has free will to either accept salvation or reject it.

In fact, the pastor of a First Baptist church posted this blog on his non-Calvinist church website in November 2013 which says: “We can argue the merits of Calvinism. But of this we can be certain. Those who call on his name shall be saved. Whether you believe God has predetermined whom he will allow to call on his name or not, know this. If you call on his name, you will be saved.”

That statement by that pastor contradicts itself, and is very confusing. He says that it might be possible that Calvinists are right and that God had already predetermined if you are going to heaven or hell, but if you or your friends call on God’s name, you and they will be saved. He leaves out the part of what if you or your friends are not predetermined to go to heaven.

What this pastor means is that he leans toward Calvinism, and that you or your friends cannot call upon God for salvation unless you have been predetermined to be one of the elect. So, if you cannot call upon God, that means you will never be denied because you cannot call on God in the first place. (I am not Calvinist and do not believe that God made certain people predestined to go to Heaven and certain people predestined to go to Hell. That is not how I see God.)

If you were to ask a Baptist sitting in a pew today how to be saved, this is what you would be told, “When the invitation is given, go forward, the pastor will take you by the hand and will ask you if you are accepting Christ as your savior. You say yes, they will pray with you and it is done.” Baptism will follow if and when you decide to be baptized, but baptism is not a part of the salvation process. Male and female salvation was always the same.

That is the way it used to be. And that is still the official way Baptists and other evangelicals are saved.

But a new element has been introduced, and even though it is not a part of a church’s “altar call” or “invitation to receive Christ,” it is what is being taught to young preachers. The next post will explain.

amazon.com/author/taylorshirley
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 7

Remember this series is headed toward complementarians changing the way women must be saved by making little man-gods. What does God do? Creation (procreation fits here for man-gods) and salvation.

As you have guessed by this time, it depends upon which faith denomination you want to be saved in. Saved means you are going to heaven, and not hell. Do people even talk about “being saved” anymore?

Anyway, today we will discuss the Calvinist part of salvation that is believed by Southern Baptists. Remember, my background is 53 years of active service and dedication and belief as a Southern Baptist.

Presbyterians used to be a very common faith denomination and every city and town had a Presbyterian church. My father was born into a Presbyterian family and was baptized as a baby in the late 1800s. He became a Baptist and was a licensed minister, pianist, and deacon in a little Baptist church which he helped start as a mission church, and our family never knew him as a Presbyterian. I never met a person who I knew was a Presbyterian until recent years.

Baptists and Presbyterians have long had a commonality with John Calvin who shaped the Presbyterian faith, and Baptists who follow this are called Calvinists. Many Baptists are Calvinists, and more are becoming so. Calvinists are a very strict, conservative sect operating within Baptist churches. Many Southern Baptist Seminaries promote their Calvinist leanings. Russell Moore, Al Mohler, Bruce Ware, Wade Burleson, and many other Baptist Christians that you might recognize are Calvinists. I insist on repeating over and over: I am not a Calvinist.

Baptists who subscribe to Calvinist doctrine, (they also operate under the umbrella of the Southern Baptist Convention), believe that in the womb God decided if you were destined for heaven or hell, and thus Baptists use the term “once saved, always saved (from the womb forward),” which gives assurance to many Baptists, and causes unbelief by others. Baptists often use the words “if they were truly saved” which most do not understand that this, too, comes from the Calvinist view because it means that perhaps they were not chosen for salvation before birth.

If I were Calvinist, I would be out fishing today instead of writing this.

But I am not, so here I am with a section that is far too long so I will divide it up one more time in which we will continue the discussion of how Southern Baptists are saved.

amazon.com/author/taylorshirley
The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source
Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 6

Every Christian faith persuasion has its own doctrine about salvation. It is important to learn how other faiths teach that people come to individual salvation. We will give their faith persuasion because you will not be informed properly unless you understand the process in churches around you. Remember, we are all using the same Bible, and we all believe salvation comes through the death and resurrection of Christ. At least most Christians do even though that is being challenged by some theologians.

Below is a simplified explanation of the salvation process. The person walking down the aisle toward the pastor to accept Christ most likely has no idea of the theological complexities of each faith denomination, and truthfully they don’t have to know anything except that are responding to the desire within themselves to be saved. At this point in their lives they probably have no idea what living for Christ means, and certainly have not formed deep theological expressions of faith.

Churches of Christ believe that individuals make their profession of faith and that they must be baptized in order for salvation to be complete. Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists baptize infants in the trust that those babies and children will later make their decision in confirmation classes or through life decisions.

United Pentecostals believe that people are not saved unless he or she speaks in tongues, and is baptized in Jesus’ name, and, as expressed above, they also believe that the promise in Acts 2:38 means that if a person is baptized in Jesus’ name, that is a promise that they will be saved at some time in their life. Assemblies of God rose out of the United Pentecostal faith, believing that when a person is saved they are sanctified, but do not have to speak in tongues in order to be saved, even though speaking in tongues is common among them after salvation.

Presbyterians follow John Calvin (1564) with one of the strangest salvation process of them all.  Calvinists believe that God allows certain people to call on Him and accept their predestined salvation.

“Calvin defines predestination as ‘God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each [person]. For … eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others.’ So predestination is an act of God’s will through which God elects or chooses those whom God calls to faith and thus to eternal life, and through which God chooses those who will not receive faith. Other theologians have seen in predestination only a positive calling to eternal life. Still others have seen it as God’s foreknowledge of who would choose faith.” (John Calvin – b.1509-d.1564)

You can see from this statement by John Calvin that he actually says that God creates certain people to be damned to hell. What kind of God is that? It is not how I see God, and some Presbyterians are beginning to question that concept of a Heavenly Father.

Others believe that salvation is a process and that you are not actually saved until you die. Catholics believe in a purgatory where salvation can be delayed until certain conditions are met.

Baptism is connected to salvation, either in a two-step process for salvation (one pastor told me I was living on borrowed time because I had not been baptized) or as a symbolic act. Generally baptism follows a personal decision to follow Christ. Most churches baptize in the name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Some faiths believe that salvation is a two-step process, and is not complete until the person is baptized. Some faiths baptize both infants and adults. Some faiths, Baptists included, baptize very young children.

Most faiths will baptize adults after the adult has expressed a belief in Jesus Christ as savior. Some churches will not accept another denomination’s baptism for a person wanting to joing their church and that person must be baptized again. Note that the number of baptisms are at a 30 year low all across Christianity.

Some Christian faiths believe salvation can be lost, and if a person falls from grace, that person must be saved again. Relatively few people feel the need to be saved again, so even if it is a church’s official doctrine, few practice it. It used to be fairly common for Baptists to “rededicate their lives” as opposed to having to be saved again, because Baptists believe in “once saved, always saved” which is an adaptation from Calvin’s predestination belief that if God has preordained you for salvation, you cannot lose that.

Nicodemus asked Jesus how could he be saved (John 3:1-21). Today Christians ask how to be saved and the answer “It depends upon which denomination or Christian group you are in.”

Keep reading the coming blogs because we are going to show you how complementarians have changed the very act of salvation

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How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 5

We look to God for our spiritual selves and for our physical selves. This is expressed through salvation and also through daily living. We will discuss salvation and how complementarians change salvation for women.

Evangelism Explosion by Dr James Kennedy has long been used as a handbook for eager church members to use when they made visitation calls to people in their neighborhood, or to people who had attended a church service and made the mistake of leaving their name and address. Evangelism Explosion, 1961, is now in its fourth printing and is still a bestseller among evangelicals.

When Kennedy wrote the book, he was the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church which began as Presbyterian of the United States of America, which allows women ordination to be pastors. In 1978, under Kennedy’s leadership, Coral Ridge joined the conservative Presbyterian Church in America that does not allow women ordination.

According to Wikipedia, “Evangelism Explosion’s materials have been translated into seventy languages. Jeff Noblit (I am not sure why he is quoted) suggests that it is “probably the most used and copied soul-winning training course ever embraced by Southern Baptists,” while Stan Guthrie suggests that it is “the best known and most widely used evangelistic training curriculum in church history.” It is currently used by over 20,000 churches worldwide.”

“If you were to die tonight, are you certain you would go to heaven?” was a question we were to ask when witnessing to a prospective convert. There were other key points made when I studied the book at my Baptist church in the 1970s. I, too, wanted to know how to bring a person to accept Christ. One such key point was to look around the living room and pick out a picture and make some comment about it that you could use to start the conversation about heaven and the person’s spiritual condition.

Never being very clever at espionage, and being far too direct in my approach, this did not fit my personality. I can see through manipulation a mile away and was sure others could, too. In fact, one day a few years ago, I was in a Christian bookstore and had just asked if they carried a children’s book that accepted the fact that dinosaurs were here millions of years ago, when these questions were turned on me. I wanted to tell the young lady that I thought her approach was awfully crude (and rude) and was straight from the book. But I was much older, and it was my lunch hour, and most times I do not want to draw attention to myself, so I let her ask her questions and I answered them.

Yes, I am confident that if I die tomorrow, my soul will be with Christ. As I write this, I am aware of how fleeting life is. One day I was with a woman when she received a phone call that her daughter had just been killed in a car accident. So the question can fit every one of us, but it is not the best way to bring up a conversation about a loving God who wants to save us.

My personal salvation experience was that I accepted Christ while kneeling beside the bathtub one night while the baby was asleep and my husband was watching the election returns on television. Nobody asked any questions, and there was no prepared sentence that I said back to Christ. I did argue with Him, though. I had been baptized two times already, and still did not feel like I was saved, and I wanted some kind of assurance that this time would be for real, because I sure did not want a third baptism if there was no salvation. Sufficient to say, there was a third baptism, and this time there was no doubt, and has not been since that time 60 years ago.

But this series is not about me. It is about men who have the Desire to be God, and how they are infiltrating that desire into mainstream Christianity. They are doing it through the relationships mankind has with God – salvation and daily living.

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How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 4

In Genesis 3:4, Satan tempted Eve with the fruit by telling her that God knew that their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil. God was the ultimate being, there was none like God.

Eve, desiring wisdom, took the fruit and ate it. Then she gave it to Adam and he also ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and now both Eve and Adam knew good and evil. They were banished from the garden with the new clothes on their backs that God made for them.

Then God said that these human beings had become like God in that they now knew good and evil. (Genesis 3:21-22 NIV), The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

As they left the garden, there was no leadership involved. Neither Eve nor Adam was deemed to have leadership over the other.  Now they both had knowledge of good and evil, making them individually capable of doing what is good, or choosing to do what is evil. They were equal. They were equal from the beginning and they were equal after the sinning. God said so.

God is not evil, but these humans were not God, and the knowledge of right and wrong would often cause man to choose that which is wrong. We see it in God’s words, “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

Mankind has the desire for eternal life. We want to go to heaven, we want to be saved, and we want to be with God. We believe that God wants that for us also, so much so that he sent His Son Jesus to make that possible, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:15).

We believe that eternal life comes from God, and not from human males. We desire eternal life, but it is not ours to give or to withhold, even for ourselves.

Man has often desired to have more spiritual authority than God gave mankind. Look at Jesus’ disciples. We are told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that James and John came to Jesus asking to sit one on each side of Jesus when Jesus came into his kingdom. Jesus told them flatly that they did not belong there. No man is divine and human man cannot be in that place. Yet men want that position and they have claimed it, by a misinterpretation of the scriptures. They have gone further than to claim it. They have chosen to teach that husbands represent Christ (the savior) in a marriage, while giving the part of the church (the lesser, the one that needs to be saved) to wives.

Women do not want to be greater in the kingdom today than males, and women did not want it back then. Women never asked Jesus for any honor to be bestowed upon them, unlike his Disciples James and John who did ask for such an honor. Women do not claim superiority over males, nor do women desire to be males. Women just claim equality.

But look back at what God said about man. God said that man would reach out and take it. Just what God said would happen, is happening. Males are stretching forth their hands, and some are claiming that males hold the power of everlasting life, and that women must denounce their desire to be males (man-gods) in order to obtain that everlasting life for themselves. In this way, they believe that human males become our gateway to God.

To become a gateway to God means that you are directly connected to God but those who enter the gateway must enter through you.

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How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 3

If someone told you that human males are born to be gods, you would brand that person as a heretic, or perhaps a Mormon. (Last week, my Mormon hairdresser actually told me he was God in his family) Yet that is what is being taught by some professors in Southern Baptist (SBC) affiliated seminaries. Any pastor or seminary that uses Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism as their guide teaches this.

This misogynous book was published in 1991 and was, and still is, sponsored by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It continues to be a best-seller. The 482 page book is a collection of male headship writings and teachings of various Christians. John Piper and Wayne Grudem edited this book and it is therefore assumed that they agree with its teachings, for why would anybody put something in a book that they do not agree with? And why would anyone use such a book unless they, too, believe it?

In this post, we will use their own words to see how they express this belief that men are gods, and that women are inferior to these human male gods. In order to elevate themselves, they must first oppress females. They do that with their claim that women want to be men. This is evidenced all through their Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood book. Others have taken up their mantra that women want to be men, as we can see in the email I received.

I don’t even know where to begin! By saying the things you say, you are instantly breaking Gods commands for women. How can you, a poor sinner, decide what the scripture means? It’s very simple if you read the words that are written, and not what you WANT to think it says. God’s words are non-negotiable and are to be lived every single day. I know we all sin, but by saying that His words/commands are WRONG…I can only pray you will see the true word of God and repent. Women are NOT equal to men, or they would BE men. You are mad at God because he did not make you a man (a comment on my blog).

For some time I have been struggling with the teaching that God chose males to be rulers over women. I could not understand how any Christian group or pastor can teach that women can give birth to a boy-child who they believe is inherently greater than the mother is. But I had a problem with this because every time I would think, “A woman cannot give birth to a being superior to herself,” I would come up with Mary who gave birth to Jesus, who was the son of God.

Yes, she could do it, but that is the exception and women cannot give birth to a greater being than she herself, can she? A human boy baby is believed by complementarians to have spiritual leadership imbued within his being, simply because he was born male.

You will be surprised as I was to learn that complementarians are actually teaching that women – you and I – are giving birth to god-men on earth. These little boy-babies we birth are divine because how else can a baby become divine except by birth? Little girl babies are not thought to be divine, nor in the line-up with God, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Husbands.

Adam, who was in God’s image, passed the divine image (albeit flawed by sin) on to his son Seth. The divine image resided in the individuals Adam and Seth. (MALE-FEMALE EQUALITY AND MALE HEADSHIP GENESIS 1-3 by Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr., page 89 of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood).

Here we have Adam passing along his divinity through his seed to a son, Seth. According to complementarians, a woman in the image of God reflects an incomplete image, as she does not have spiritual or physical leadership over others.

We can see Ortlund’s reasoning in one of two ways: 1) Only Seth had the divine image and the other sons of Adam did not, and divinity would have been lost; or he meant 2) Adam passed his divine image to Seth and then to all his sons (which is the way you must see it in order for males to have headship over females).

According to Ortlund, as each male had sons, those sons became imbued with divinity. Thus they became little man-gods, which they teach is still being passed on through to sons in the 21st Century. Ortlund does not say that divinity was passed on through daughters, even though he does claim that men and women are both in the image of God. Was not Eve, too, in God’s image and wouldn’t Eve have passed that divinity to her sons and daughters, if divinity could be passed through humans? We are in the 21st century here, but down through the ages, people have thought that kings and emperors, and other leaders, had divinity on earth. It startles us when we realize our own pastors are teaching this.

Genesis 5:1 says “…When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And when they were created, he called them ‘man.'” That scripture goes on to say that that Adam had a son in his likeness, in his own image, so this is apparently where Ortlund feels he can exclude women. But then the statement is made that Adam had other sons and daughters and no mention is made of those sons having the divine image, so Ortlund is choosing to see what he wants to see in order to confirm his beliefs.

Instead of Desiring God, as John Piper and Wayne Grudem would have you believe through their premier misogynistic work, these seminary professors, pastors, preachers, Christian leaders, and Piper and Grudem themselves, are Desiring to BE God.

There is only one God in heaven, so they cannot all be God, but they teach that all men have the potential to be man-gods on earth.

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Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 2

Jesus makes no mention of bequeathing a husband the privilege of representing him on earth, nor does Jesus make any mention that a woman’s salvation would be dependent upon anyone other than Jesus Himself. Jesus promised that he would leave an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, on earth to lead us. With the Holy Spirit within us, women need no further representation, or role play actor, or leader, and certainly not a male head. For what leadership can a male head give that the Holy Spirit cannot?

“All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid,” John 14:26-27.

These words were spoken specifically to Jesus’ disciples, but all Christians have believed these words apply to those of us who are Christians, men and women alike. We believe Holy Spirit was made known equally to both men and women at Pentecost (Acts 2:17-24).

Before Jesus began his ministry on earth, John the Baptist was to prepare the way. Luke tells us that the angel of the Lord told Zechariah that his son, whom we know as John the Baptist, would be like the prophet Elijah, “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous – to make ready a people prepared for the Lord,” (Luke 1:17). Jesus says of John the Baptist in Matthew 11:14, “And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.” Jesus was referring to Malachi 4:5-6, “See I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

There was no Elijah moment when husbands were commissioned for service, or were charged with the protection of their wives, and no Elijah moment when husbands were given the ability for sanctification of their wives to create a covenant relationship with God (1 Kings 19:16-19). More importantly, there was no Pentecost moment when husbands became the head of Christian women.

Yet, that is what it has come to in many religious circles, particularly in seminaries, and among pastors and others who believe that women are to be submissive to their husbands (some even believe that husbands will account for their wives in heaven). These complementarians believe and teach that husbands represent Christ and that wives represent the church. Therefore, to complementarians, husbands become the provider, the protector and the sanctifier to lead their wives into a covenant relationship with God.

Stay with me because this next post is going to get really crazy, and it would be funny if it wasn’t what they actually teach and believe. These are Christian seminary professors and leaders in the Christian faith and should know better.

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Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 1

Desiring to be God, complementarian religious men have made themselves a woman’s savior, her advocate, and the gateway to God. In next few posts, you will see how male religious leaders have made themselves into man-gods, and how they want to convince all men that they, too, are man-gods.

Christians, Jews and Muslims believe in one God. Although we see God through different lenses, and we call God by different names, we worship the same God. Most, but not all, Christians believe that God is Triune, meaning that God is in three persons: Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit.

The Triune God causes problems as some see Christians as actually trying to divide God into three separate Gods. Christians have problems with this also, often emphasizing one over the other. Some Christians buy into the belief that Jesus is eternally submissive to God, instead of being fully God. This is called the Eternal Son Submission theology and is used as the basis for claiming that women are eternally submissive to males. Those who teach and believe that women are to be submissive to husbands because this is a commandment from God for all women through the ages, are in practice subscribing to this Eternal Son Submission theology. Because of this teaching, these Christians are in danger of adding another god to the Trinity, and this time it is a little man-god called “husband.”

Now, understand, they do not say that, and they would deny it from the rooftops. But they quote certain scriptures from the Bible and hold women to the literal interpretation of those scriptures, and when they do that, a husband becomes a little man-god.

A quick note to explain egalitarian versus complementarian: Egalitarians believe that men and women are equal. Complementarians believe they are not. I am egalitarian. The word egalitarian will not be used in this series, but the word complementarian will be sprinkled all through because this series is about their unbiblical teaching that males are superior to females, both spiritually and physically.

This is how it works. Complementarians teach that husbands, or males, are to have headship, also called leadership, over women. In order for males to have headship over women, Jesus Christ would have to share his Lordship with human men. If Jesus shared his Lordship with a man – married or not – that man would become an earthly god. Whenever anyone believes that men are to have headship over women, they are subscribing to a belief that is contrary to our Christian faith, which is one God.

There is no indication in the Old Testament from the Prophets, or in the Gospels, that the Messiah would share his Lordship with human males on earth.

Women have told me that they believe that the husband is the head of the wife like Christ is the head of the church. They are quoting Paul in Ephesians, but to believe this way, you must accept that Jesus is sharing his Lordship with a human man. It is more probable that Paul meant for the Ephesians to look at their own families where husbands were already the heads, and then think of Jesus as being the head of his church family. But that is not the way complementarians want you to interpret that scripture.

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The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist
Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood
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Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition
How complementarians make little man-gods. Part 2

Here we go again

Don’t they ever get tired of arguing about women and gays?

The Vatican begins its “Synod on Synodality” next week on October 4, where they will discuss – you guessed it – women and gays. The word Synodality means listening together to see how God is dealing with individuals. Call me cynical, but it is likely a session to listen together to hear what they already believe.

They will abide by their 1976 declaration on the ordination of women. The Vatican even says so when they declare that discussion of doctrine is off the table “Changes in doctrine and morality are off the table, according to Vatican officials.”

But this blog is not to just beat up on the Catholics. We will also beat up on SBC and CBMW because they LOVE to discuss women and gays.

Because of the loud clamor of dissenting voices, in 2016, both Catholics and Southern Baptists put together a commission or an advisory council to study the matter of women in church leadership. But do not expect anything to come of either one, because the outcome has already been decided before any meeting ever takes place.

It will not be these Christian leaders that pave the way for women. It will be ordinary people taking a stand and speaking up. The Southern Baptist Convention and the Vatican can save their money and their time. They both know what conclusion they will reach.

Let’s take a look at the picture regarding Christian women as it stands now (in 2016 when I wrote this)

Pope Francis institutes the Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women

On the now famous plane trip July 29, 2013, Pope Francis, when asked about women’s ordination, said “That door is closed.” Women must remember that it was Pope Benedict who closed that door in 2010 by saying that pedophilia crime is on the same level as having a woman as a preacher.

On May 12, 2016, Pope Francis was asked again to address the call for Catholic women to be allowed to serve as deacons. There is a specific distinction between deacons and priests. Deacons can preach, perform marriages, lead funeral services and run parishes. They can be married men but they must have been married before they became deacons. They cannot hear confessions or consecrate the Eucharist. As of yet, Catholic deacons cannot be women. Currently there are about 18,000 Catholic deacons in the United States, all males.

Pope Francis’ answer was that he would think about appointing a study. The news sources picked it up and declared that the Pope had opened the gate for ordaining Catholic women as deaconesses.

Two months later, Pope Francis established an official commission that could study the question “of the diaconate of women, especially with regard to the first ages of the Church,” the Vatican’s statement said.

The commission’s purpose falls short of what Pope Francis was originally asked to do. This commission is not charged with studying the possibility of women deaconesses in the 21st century; instead, this commission is to look at the history of early day deacons and deaconesses and the Church’s tradition. Hardly an open door for women today.

Plus, this is the third time such a commission has been appointed, and neither time has it gone anywhere.

It is safe to say that this commission will also die on the vine.

Women’s roles in Southern Baptist Convention focus of advisory council

Southern Baptist women have also stood up and asked for a place at the table.

Not to be outdone by the Catholics, a few weeks after Catholic women appealed to Pope Francis in May, on June 16, 2016, Southern Baptists formed an Advisory Council⁵ to “study the perspectives and strategies women in Southern Baptist churches bring to the God-given task of fulfilling the Great Commission.”

They made no pretense about entertaining the idea that women could be deacons or pastors. That is not even on the table. What is on the table is the fact that they felt the need to praise women for their contributions, hoping they would be satisfied with that.

This Advisory Council is made up of 18 women. Three of the women are wives of Southern Baptist seminary presidents: Mrs. Al Mohler, Mrs. Chuck Kelley, and Mrs. Jeff Iorg. These women prefer to be known as ‘the wife of’ before any other professional accomplishments are listed.

Since Southern Baptists believe that wives are to submit graciously to their husbands, and that Baptist women cannot be deacons or pastors, or even lead men in the church or home, there is no way these women will come to any conclusion that their husbands do not agree with. In fact, that is what male headship means: he makes the rules and she cannot decide against him. It would be heresy if a SBC seminary wife spoke in direct opposition to their faith statements as posted to their websites. Make no mistake: if any of those 18 women said that women should be allowed to be deacon or preachers, she and her husband would face harsh criticism.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood seeks a more dominant voice

While the Catholics are studying the historical role of women deaconesses and the SBC is congratulating themselves on allowing women any position at all, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has recently taken a hard-line step toward keeping women in their place.

Their new president, Denny Burk, is calling on all Christians to get in line behind the Danvers Statement by signing up more Christian groups to endorse it. Burk’s “My vision for the future of CBMW” spells it out.

Burk wants to renew this war against women with “resources, conferences, etc. in order to equip churches and organizations to face these current challenges.” They already have those resources plus they have locked egalitarian (women’s equality) books from being sold in Christian bookstores. What more do they want? Witch hunts come to mind.

Burk also wants to spread the net further and encompass all gender and sexual identities. It is important to remember that even if you have strongly held objections against homosexuals and transgendered people, it is never right to embark on a crusade against your fellow man. Look at the harm of the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, women’s rights, and the damage already done to homosexuals down through the years. Christians should never be complicit in exacting damage to those we disagree with or see as less than ourselves.

You are the deciding factor

Baptists and Catholics have long been on the wrong side of justice. Among them are the witch-hunts during the Inquisition, slavery in the United States, women’s right to vote, and criminalizing homosexuality.

Southern Baptists, Roman Catholics, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood have outlined their positions in 2016. We know the conclusion they will reach because we know what defines them. They are all bound by church tradition and recent statements of faith such as the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 and the Danvers Statement of 1987. They cannot act outside their man-made restrictions.

What they do not know – and what they have no control over – is how you will react.

The question women never asked Jesus

Let’s see what Jesus had to say about marriage. Did you know that it was always men who asked Jesus about marriage and divorce? From their questions, it seems that they were not interested in learning how to improve their marriages. Women never asked Jesus about marriage or divorce.

Look at Mark 10:2, Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” Jesus answered them by saying that Moses permitted divorce because of the hardness of their hearts. He also said that they completely misunderstood marriage. Jesus said that marriage was to be between a man and his wife. The husband would leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two would become one flesh. It appeared that these men were more interested in getting out of a marriage than in keeping a marriage.

Then Jesus walked away and went into a house as if the conversation was over.

But his disciples were interested this time. They wanted to hear the rest of the story. So they asked him about it.

You can almost hear Jesus sigh. You can almost see him shake his head. Because what he is going to say is not what they want to hear. Remember it was men who were asking about divorce.

Jesus told them that if any man divorced his wife and married another woman, that he commits adultery against his first wife. Jesus put the blame on the man. He blamed him because of his sin and because he caused his wife to sin. Then Jesus brings in equality. He says that, “you men think you are the only ones who can divorce your spouse. But I tell you that the woman can divorce you, and if she does, and if she married another man, she commits adultery.” Against who? Against her first husband, just as the man commits adultery against his first wife.

Equality. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I love this passage even though it is difficult. It appears to be very hard against divorce, but it is actually hard against those who seek to rid themselves of their spouses. I believe that divorce is the only solution for many marriages. There are a bunch of men that I would have divorced if I had been unfortunate enough to marry them, and I am sure they would say likewise.

What I like is that Jesus tells men that woman can divorce them, too, and cause them to commit adultery. Women who divorce their husbands make them guilty of adultery, just like women themselves have been made guilty of adultery by their husbands. Now that is a new wrinkle! They had never considered that they, if they happened to be innocent, could be tagged with adultery. I do not know how these men could commit adultery when their law already allowed polygamy. There is a lot of mystery here in this scripture. I do not understand everything, or maybe I don’t even understand very much about it. But this is one of my favorite Scriptures on Equality spoken by Jesus.

Women never asked about marriage and divorce, but Jesus gave women equality in it anyway. If you think your church should do the same, tell them so.

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A Look at the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood continues in their great evil against women. They are selling men a bill of goods that they cannot deliver. In the final day, when God has his say, man will find himself stripped of what he thought was his male headship. Consider who is Head in Heaven. It is not human man, because for a man to be Head in Heaven, that would mean that he had divinity on earth. Who among you will say that males are created to share God’s Lordship?

The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s office is located in Louisville, Kentucky. Supporters include all of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminaries (they teach the preachers). The group’s core beliefs are detailed in the Danvers Statement, drafted by evangelical leaders in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1987, and other religious entities.

We cry out for justice for all those who have suffered, directly and indirectly.

At a time in our church history that the main focus should be on winning lost souls and spreading the gospel to a hurting world, we fear for the future because the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has placed a greater priority on women’s submissive role rather than on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I urge the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood to read the story Nathan told to David, and understand that justice will come. It is my desire that the Council repent of its destructive teachings before that great day of reckoning, because they have sacrificed God’s female lambs in order to have their own desires fulfilled.

1 Samuel 2:1-5 The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. ² The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, ³ but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

⁴ “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

⁵ David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! ⁶ He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

⁷ Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” 

And to help them before that time of reckoning, we demand that they apologize for their teaching that denigrates God’s cherished female children.

For the sake of all Christians of all genders, we demand that CBMW apologize publicly for their misuse of Holy Scripture, and for the inestimable harm suffered by women and families.

Christians have a message to tell the world, and it is time that we do it. Over 800 years ago, Christians decided to force Christianity upon people by the sword. Then Christian pastors tried hellfire and damnation. None of those worked. Somewhere along the line Jesus was lost, and it is up to this generation to find Him.

Every day I speak against injustice toward women. The root of all these religious attacks is how women are viewed. When a nation and a people and a religion believe they are in control of over one-half of the world, that superiority extends to anybody else they choose. It gives license. That license to discriminate against women is found in churches, in mosques, in temples, and on the street. Christians need to examine their hearts and accept complete equality for women in churches and in their own homes. The concept of male headship has no place in Christianity.

If American churches would lead the way, change would happen. As it is, the majority of religions in the United States today will not allow women full equality. Until we do, we give license. We cannot say that we are different until we resolve our feelings about male headship, in light of the actions and teachings of Christ.

The reality is that most Christians will not condemn this teaching against women because, they, too, believe it and teach it. However, they are still leaving Jesus out of Christianity. Jesus is our standard, and since Jesus did not commit women to husbands, or to males, and because Jesus did not deny women anything based on their being women, then we cannot in good stewardship of the gospel, do so either.

When we are willing to withhold the complete God from women (which we do when we deny that women can serve God in every capacity), that is hate. It is also obstructing the message of Christ.

Will you speak up for women? Will you determine that people will know that we are different?

Available on Amazon in print and on Kindle.

Amazon.com/author/taylorshirley

The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist

Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood

Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source

Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

Biblical manhood and womanhood

I am tired of being a ‘hood.” Childhood means that you haven’t grown up yet and not as much is expected of you as it will be when you reach adulthood. Adulthood means that you have reached that age when you ought to know better, and you will be held accountable for your actions. Those are fairly simple.

I am so tired of Manhood and Womanhood.

Manhood sounds sexual. In fact, I will probably get some quirky people reading this because of the use of that word. Maybe it is a sexy word. Maybe that is the reason that the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood chose it. Maybe they wanted to show their machismo.

Now that is a good word. Let’s change the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood to the Council on Biblical Machismo. That is all that is needed – CBM – and that is all they want anyway. You can drop the word ‘Womanhood’ when you make this change. The word ‘womanhood’ just means being a woman, and we all know what that means.

But Machismo. Now that is a word!

It means “a strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity.”

Isn’t that the definition of ‘manhood,” also? Entitlement – how God created man to live.

Read the excellent article by Michelle A Gonzales, “Breaking the Habits of Machismo:”

“Some churches calling themselves Christian continue to act as if women are second-class citizens in the kingdom of God – despite what the Bible says.”

I am tired of being a hood. If you are tired of being labeled a hood, speak up!

We have raised the hood on so-called biblical manhood
and womanhood.  Join us!

Available on Amazon in print and on Kindle.

Amazon.com/author/taylorshirley

The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist

Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood

Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source

Dethroning Male Headship: 2^nd Edition

The church and homosexuality

I am going to jump right in and talk about the elephant in the room—homosexuality. I just read this article by Dr. Al Mohler Jr “The train is leaving the station, Andy Stanley’s departure from Biblical Christianity.” In this article, he blasts Rev. Andy Stanley’s decision to welcome LGBTQ+ Christians into his church. Mohler, of course, is horrified and tries to justify his horrification by scripture.

Dr. Mohler, the beef you have is not with homosexuals. You already have LGBTQ+ in your church. What you are really afraid of is that when Christians open their hearts to homosexuals, it will cause them to also open their hearts to women preachers.

The Apostle Paul did not say, “I do not permit a woman to speak, because if she does, your next pastor will be a lesbian.” But he may as well have said that, according to the irrational fears pastors have presented to congregations.

Years ago, I heard about subliminal messages in magazines and advertisements. In fact, a review of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies shows that subliminal stimuli activate specific regions of the brain despite participants being unaware (Wikipedia).  So, yes, I am sure that messages get across to our brains without us consciously being aware of it. That is what has happened with women’s equality being equated with homosexuality.

They want us to connect the two and we do.

They cannot, and will not, tolerate women preachers. So Fundamentalists tell us that churches will be full of homosexuals if they allow women as pastors. They lead us to believe that any woman who feels called to preach is a homosexual. They tell us that when a woman wants to pastor a church it is because she wants to be “a man.” So with that unfounded reasoning, they tell us that both the pulpits and the pews will be filled up with homosexuals if women are allowed to preach. Fundamentalists have bound equality to homosexuality, and perhaps the majority has bought into it as well.

There are a handful of religious denominations that accept women as equals, but, ultimately, they have become the stumbling block against women pastors instead of being the standard. The reason is that these churches that have accepted women as pastors have also recognized that within their congregations there likely are homosexuals.

Fundamentalists have engaged in a rock-throwing battle against homosexuals. They spread emails, facebook posts, and promote any and every pastor who has a bad word to say against homosexuals.

Personally, I have never encountered a homosexual woman pastor. But I have heard of, met, and encountered male pastors who are homosexuals, adulterers, pedophiles, wife beaters, murderers, abusers, and sexual deviants. No church will say that because some men are guilty of these things, we should deny all men from service in the church. But that is what they say about women pastors—that some might be homosexuals, so no woman can be a pastor.

A rational person will tell you that the Bible shows absolutely no connection between women and homosexuality, whether they are being allowed to serve God fully in the church or not. However, those who oppose equality will tell you that they do not want a woman preacher, because churches that have women preachers have opened their hearts to accept homosexuality.

But look at the Catholic Church. They do not accept women as priests, and yet we have been made aware that there are numerous priests who are homosexual and many others are pedophiles. What is the connection there? They officially do not accept homosexuality, however, they are beset by male homosexual priests and priest child molesters. The natural conclusion is that if the Catholic Church accepted women as priests, they would have fewer homosexuals and child molesters.

There is no connection between homosexuality and women pastors, but subliminally we think that if we accept women pastors, we will officially endorse homosexuality. That doesn’t make sense. It is not scriptural. But let’s go on with the comparison with evangelicals and Catholics.

Is it just Protestant denominations that accept women as pastors that will have some pastors who are lesbians? Why does that reasoning apply only to women? Why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to men and make it a possibility that some of our male pastors would be homosexuals. In other words, if you allow women to preach, and it opens the doors to women homosexual preachers, wouldn’t it stand to reason that because we allow men to preach, it would also open the door to male homosexual preachers?

They cannot make that connection, because if they did, there would be NO pastors.

The subliminal message is that once we open our hearts to women pastors, we will also open our hearts to homosexuality. And that is the whole crux of the matter. They believe that we cannot open our hearts to homosexuals.

“Hate the sin, but love the sinner” applies only to homosexuals. The word that enters our brain first is hate. We actually hate the sinner. We forbid women to preach by tagging women with homosexuality, we wage wars against homosexuals, we send out emails, we tell them they are going to hell, and in all ways show a hateful attitude. The love part of that little ditty gets lost.

You can thank the Southern Baptist Convention for propagating the connection with women pastors and homosexuality. In order to purify the Southern Baptist Convention of homosexuals and women pastors, they set about disfellowshipping churches because they were impure according to the gospel of the SBC. The only churches they disfellowship are churches they believe are soft on homosexuality and/or have women pastors. They do not disfellowship churches where a male pastor has been found to be homosexual, or an adulterer, or a pedophile.

Women’s place in early church days was based on the fact that they were women, and was not linked in any way to homosexuality.

With fundamentalists and complementarians so strong against women these days, I predict that the rights of gays and lesbians will be recognized in the churches long before the rights of women and will be the catalyst that finally gives women equality in the church and home. Same-sex marriages will become common, as the Supreme Court made it legal for same-sex men and women to marry on June 26, 2015. The people in the pews will begin to accept homosexuality (like they are doing now with black/white marriages). Once homosexuality is accepted, fundamental churches will have no legs to stand on, and women pastors and deacons will finally be accepted.

I am not advocating for or against homosexuality. My advocacy is for Christian women’s equality. I am just saying that the real message here is just the opposite of what we are being told. The real message is that once we open our hearts to homosexuals, we will also open our hearts to women pastors—not the other way around.

Do you know why we will not be successful before then? We will not win because we are not hungry enough. We do not fight for it. Oh, we discuss it. But we are not hungry enough. We do not fight for equality. Our female forebears fought for equality, but we do not have a clue, or the courage, to fight this injustice in churches.

All in God’s name

“’Gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan getting out of hand” by the Washington Post was the guest editorial in my local paper Friday, September 8, 2023. They said, “An August 30 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says that the majority of the 100 religious edicts issued by the de facto government since August 30 directly enforce severe restrictions on women and girls.” Now girls are flogged for leaving their house and going to school.

Before you shake your head at this and wonder how they can do it, I will tell you. Their religion tells them so. Just as most Christian religions today tell women they are to submit. Just as The Gospel Coalition tells women they must submit; just as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood tells women they must submit; just as the Keller Center tells women they must submit; just as the Southern Baptist Convention tells women they must submit; just as many churches, institutions, seminaries, books, podcasts, blogs tell women they must submit.

The Bible tells men and women they are to submit to each other. That means no little-gods in control.

Let me tell what happened to me so you can see this in practice. I have told this story before.

This is what I wrote in 2016 and it is as true today as it was then.

If she had worn a scarf on her head, I would have expected the words that came out of her mouth. But she was a Christian, young and beautiful, working in a Christian bookstore.

I had stopped by a few months previous and left my book Dethroning Male Headship: Second Edition for them to sell and take the proceeds. I wasn’t asking anything from the sale. So I stopped by to see if the book had sold. Of course I knew they would not even attempt to sell my book, or even read it. Which is exactly what the young woman admitted to.

She said she could not get past the first few pages. I can see why. The first few pages explain the vast difference between egalitarian and complementarian beliefs. The complementarian view is so ingrained in her young life that she could not in good conscience even read that she might be wrong.

I suspect my book appeared as the serpent in the Garden of Eden to her. Unlike Eve, she would not be tempted.

You are either equal or you are not. She had chosen to believe that she was not. She had also chosen to believe that the Bible says so.

I was amazed and astounded at the conversation. I could not believe that young women are so willing to swallow complementarianism and its full expression of female submission to all males.

She quoted Timothy and Titus and said that women are to be the housekeepers. I pointed out that she was working, and she said that women could work but still were to be the housekeepers. Then she said that women were not to have careers. I asked her “what is a career?” I have been a secretary for over 35 years and she is working in a bookstore. Are those careers? She said that a career was where you could “climb the ladder” to a higher job. I laughed and told her that I suppose both she and I could climb the ladder. She could aspire to own the bookstore where she worked, and I could have been (it’s a little late for that now) like Carly Fiorina who began as a secretary and was a presidential candidate in 2016.

Where is this young woman going? She has been told that she cannot have a career (and who decides what a career is?) and she has been told that all males are superior to her. Even though she is still single, she has been led to believe that her husband will support her because the Bible says men are to provide the bread for the family. She has been led to believe that she can work outside the home if she has to, but that in doing so, she is working outside the will of God.

She said “God created sex” which will make this young woman inclined to believe anything she reads by Timothy Keller (a section called “Glory of Sex” – in his book Real Marriage of which they have two copies in their bookstore), Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, Jr., (Fifty Shades of They), and a myriad of other sex preachers. She will believe Beth Moore when she says that women tempt men today like the devil tempted Eve (When godly people do ungodly things), which was the way of thinking that began the witch hunts and resulted in women being burned as witches because “women listen to the devil.”

The serpent said “you will be like God” and now it is men who have chosen to be like God, and they teach that all females are to bow down in submission before all males. Jesus does not teach that God has given males the right to have females bow down before them.

Complementarians never quote Jesus when pushing their theology. Paige Patterson and his wife Dorothy Patterson, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Mary Kassain, and all others who began this complementarian indoctrination of our young men and women in church, and those who continue to teach it, owe all Christians, and society, an apology for their abomination of the gospel.

There are two words you need to remember when discussing female equality:

Complementarian: the religious belief and lifestyle that women are of equal worth, but must submit to all men at all times, in church and in their own home. It is also called patriarchy.

Egalitarian: the religious belief and lifestyle that women are equal – no buts. This is the belief that I subscribe to – there are no buts!

http://www.shirleytaylor.net

Books: Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood; Dethroning Male Headship; Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source; The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist. Available on Amazon in print or kindle. http://www.amazon.com/author/taylorshirley

Christianity in America

In June 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention met for their annual meeting. Messengers at the annual meeting gave initial approval to a constitutional amendment that would limit the office of pastor to men. Specifically it says that an SBC church would affirms, appoint, or employ only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture. (Their interpretation of Scripture.)

One day in the church I was attending, I felt like I was a pariah, a person hated and rejected by others. I am a woman. I do not live in the First Century, but what happened then still rules most church culture today. My soul cried out. Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to kick, scream and throw something.

All because of a skit of the woman at the well, where the presenter said, “Jews did not speak to women alone.” Alone out in public, a woman was not to be spoken to! Can you believe it? This was true then and it is true now for religious Jews and Muslims.

Go to bed with a woman, get her with child, eat the meals she cooks, tell her how wonderful she is, and then allow every man and male child to treat her as if she does not exist.

Use her. Unwrap yourself before her. And then clothe her from head to toe and silence her mouth.

Why? Why did Jews treat women that way? Women were their wives, their daughters and their mothers. Yet they felt they had a superiority that allowed this awful behavior before women. Sadly to say, Orthodox Jews still treat women this way and will not allow women to pray with men at the Wailing Wall, which is causing Jewish women to stand up and speak up. They are called “Women of the Wall.” More power to them.

Jesus showed them a new way. A way where women could be spoken to in public. A way where women could learn and spread the gospel like the woman at the well did.

What have we learned? What has the Civil Rights Movement or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 taught us? You would have thought that it forced by law the respect of all people. But it did not.

You see, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 exempted churches and religious organizations from treating black people and women with basic human kindness. In particular, it exempted churches, which allowed churches to mistreat women by limiting what they could and could not do in church.

Truth be told, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should never have been necessary. But it was because men made those laws that treated black men and women disgracefully. Today the church badly needs a Christian Civil Rights Act. But do not hold your breath. As long as Christians can continue to keep women from preaching and in submission to all males, they will do so.

We saw that in June at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention which is the largest protestant organization in America.

What the church needs is Jesus

What if when Jesus returns, there is nobody to meet him in the air? What the church needs is Jesus. Jesus was a Jew who came to change Judaism. Today Jesus is needed to change Christianity.

It is not just SBC churches and other fundamentals that are declining. All denominations and non-denominational churches are declining, and will continue downhill to get to the 11.7% in 2050 of people who are still attending church. Many of these churches in decline already embrace women fully (or they say they do) and many tell their members that God and science can co-exist.

However, these churches are also chasing their tails trying to figure out how to keep their members and draw the younger generation into a worship relationship with God.

They have the answers, but they do not know what to do with it. They are succumbing to wringing their hands because the big boys – Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists – cannot seem to stop the decline, causing them to think they cannot either. The truth is that they cannot stop the decline as long as they shy away from what makes them different in the first place from Catholics and Baptists.

I want to close this by recounting the story found in Acts 3, 4:1-18 when the church was just getting started.

It was destined to be an extraordinary day at the temple. Peter had just healed an adult man who was crippled from the time he was a child. And now he and John were telling people about Jesus and his resurrection. The people assembled there were listening because of what they had seen.

Guards always get suspicious when a group of people are intently listening to one person speak, so they slipped closer to hear what was being said, and then reported back to their captain. As you can guess, the captain of the guards did not like what they were saying so he came over to have a little chat with them. They not only chatted, but the guard took them and put them in prison overnight.

“By what power are you doing these things?” they asked Peter and John the next day.

Peter looked them in the eye and said that it was by the power of Jesus Christ, who they had killed, but who had resurrected and now they were able to do this good deed in his name, (based on Acts 3, 4:1-18).

Uh, oh.

If these unschooled and untrained men were able to do this, then what else could they do? After all, these men had been with Jesus.

So they talked, and they talked some more, and came up with the only thing they could think of: “in order that it may not be spread any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to any man in this name.”

Peter and John said: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge.”

Like Peter and John, we women cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard.

Women are powered by the same Source. Like Peter we, too, have walked with Jesus. Peter and John could not quit telling about Jesus. They were told to stop, but they could not because they were just getting started. We, who believe in equality, cannot quit now as the battle is not yet won for women’s equality. We, too, have been with Jesus. Saved by the blood of the lamb and a witness to what he has done through his Word, and to how he has spoken to us.

Jesus is our standard, and since Jesus did not commit women to husbands, or to males, and because Jesus did not deny women anything based on their being women, then we cannot in good stewardship of the gospel, do so either.

What the church needs is Jesus.

Stepping into the Christian Era

He is Risen and now what? Let’s not be too hasty lest we pack Jesus away with the plastic Easter eggs. In the last chapter The Garden, we saw how Jesus went out of his way to tell women that he was the Messiah. As we will see, there was a reason for this.

Jesus has been called “the new Adam.” That first Adam has been the bane of all mankind and so has Eve. But the Resurrection changed everything. Here was the new Adam – a spirit that gives life.

“So it is also written, The first human, Adam, became a living person, and the last Adam became a spirit that gives life.” (1 Cor. 15:45 CEB). In Bible language, this is what is known as typology. It is a doctrine of theological types; especially one holding that things in Christian belief are prefigured or symbolized by things in the Old Testament.

Let’s look again at that garden.  There is Jesus and there is Mary Magdalene. Since Jesus is the new “Adam,” Mary is the new “Eve.” She is the first to witness this new Adam. He called her by her name, thus naming her. She is a freed woman, no longer to be cursed by manmade rules and restrictions. She is freed of the stigma placed upon her by mankind. But it won’t last. Because whenever humans can place a stigma, they will, and they did.

Just as it was not a coincidence that Jesus told the Jewish Mary of Bethany that she was welcomed into the presence of the Master’s teaching; Jesus told the gentile woman that he had also come to be Messiah of the gentiles which included her; Jesus told the woman at the well that he was the Messiah whom the Samaritans had been expecting (believing that they were the true faith); it was not a coincidence that Mary Magdalene was in the garden to see the Resurrected Christ – the new Adam. Everything was leading up to this.

Genesis begins in a garden. And here we are again, in a garden where the Apostle Paul says “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The new Adam and the new Eve. And just like the original Eve, this woman Mary Magdalene who was cleansed of all her sins, remained under the curse of man. Not God, but man. So do all of us women who have come after her.

There are no more gardens. We have stepped into the Christian era.

Part 5. The Garden!

Chaos. Everybody was running here and there. It is no wonder the stories got mixed up. Some thought they saw Peter and John go into the tomb, some thought they had not arrived yet. Some saw angels, or something that looked like angels. Some saw the guards lying facedown and scrambling up with worried looks and making hasty decisions of what to tell the authorities.

“Where is he?” You can hear the determination in her voice as Mary Magdalene confronts someone she thinks is the gardener. “Just tell me where he is and I WILL GO GET HIM!” This is not some weak woman speaking. She has come to the tomb prepared to roll away a heavy stone, but now all she sees is a gaping hole and the body of Jesus is gone. She is crying, yes, but these are tears of frustration and determination. She was going to make this right. Weak people say “help me” while strong people say “I will do it.”

“Tell me where he is! I will go get him!”

Chaos. So many different accounts of this one event. But there was one thing they all were clear on. It was a woman who Jesus first revealed himself to.

There were men around – the guards who were scared half to death – and possibly Peter and John. But they didn’t get the news. It was a woman. Like all of Jesus’ proclamations, male headship played no part in this resurrection story.

So we have finally arrived in the garden and the world has been turned upside down. Where do we go from here? Do we leave Mary and the other women beside an empty grave? Yes, we do. Not as Jesus did, but as pastors and preachers and other women have determined we should do. Mary Magdalene is mentioned 12 times in relation to Jesus’ death and resurrection. After that she is no longer mentioned. Why not? This woman to whom Jesus made a personal appearance – bypassing all the others around the tomb – is left there.

I was sitting in a doctor’s office while both men and women sat around me, using their iPhones or devices. Tears came into my eyes and I wanted to shout to all there “This is the 21^st century for both men and women! Why does the church work so hard to keep women in the 1^st Century?” Because the Bible says so? Where?

Where does Jesus say that women must submit to their husbands? Where does Jesus say that women cannot be in authority over a man? It is not there, my friends. We are called Christians because we follow Christ and not some 1^st century societal customs that empowered men over women.

We have come to the garden by way of Mary of Bethany who was a Jewish woman welcomed to sit and learn from the Master himself. We have come to the garden by way of the Gentile woman who learned that Jesus was the Messiah for gentiles which included her. We have come to the garden by way of the Samaritan woman who believed that hers was the true religion, and here was the Messiah just as they expected. We have come to the garden by way of Mary Magdalene who declared she would go herself and find Jesus until he said her name and she knew he was the resurrected Christ.

We are at the garden. Who is going to stop you from going and telling?

(From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.)

Part 4. Destination, the Garden

If the first thing you think of when you remember the woman at the well is “the man you are living with now is not your husband,” then you have missed the whole point of Jesus’ visit to this Samaritan woman.

The Danvers Statement of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Affirmation #9 says: “With half the world’s population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism; with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel; with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world.”

No matter what shape the world is in, the writers of The Danvers Statement would never have chosen the woman at the well to be the instrument God used to win lost people to Christ.

But Jesus did.

Everyone knows her story. In fact, hers is one of the longest detailed stories of an event in the New Testament. It was her story. She told it to everyone who would listen. This man she had just met at the well knew that she had had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband.

Jesus was not judging her for that. He was offering her something that no man could offer a woman. He was offering her living water—from a well that would never run dry. And he told her that he was the source of this living water.

This was a woman experienced in the ways of men, and she knew this conversation was different from any she had ever had. She was certainly not the one who would be expected to announce the news that prophecy had been fulfilled and that the long-awaited Messiah had finally arrived. No one would even listen to a woman proclaiming this momentous event, would they? But for some reason, Jesus chose her to reveal his true identity.

She took that message and ran with it.

It was Jesus who brought up the subject of living water. He told her that if she drank from the water he gave, she would never be thirsty again.

She wanted that. She said she did not want to keep coming to the well to draw water. She was probably teasing him at that point as she had no idea what he was talking about. Then Jesus did something surprising. He told her to go call her husband, and then to come back.

Aha! Finally Jesus brings male headship into the conversation! “Go, call your husband and come back,” Jesus said.

The woman answered, “I have no husband.”

Was Jesus was surprised at this? Did he ask her to go call her husband just to embarrass her? No, its significance is greater than her confession that she was not married to the man with whom she was living. She was worthy in her own right, as a woman, to be told directly by him that he was the Messiah. They engaged in a theological discussion. This woman was not learning in silence. And Jesus did not rebuke her for it. She talked back and told him that she could see that he was a prophet. She declared “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

And he did explain—right then and there—to the woman at the well, a woman who did not have a husband to tell her if what she was hearing was right or wrong. She heard, she accepted, she told.

This story of the woman at the well is found in John 4:4-42 and begins by saying, “Now he had to go through Samaria.” It is best translated that “he purposed in his mind” to go through Samaria, because the Jews had found a way, even though it was inconvenient, to avoid Samaria. They thought they were better than these poor cousins, the Samaritans, and for a Jew to deliberately go through Samaria was unusual.

There was something in Samaria that Jesus needed to do in order to complete his earthly work.

With this story of the Woman at the Well, we see how the picture of Jesus is coming together.

The Jewish woman, Mary of Bethany, who Jesus permitted to sit at his feet right beside the men, and learn at a time when learning scripture was forbidden to women

The Gentile woman to whom Jesus revealed that he was not sent only to Israel, but to all people, which included her.

The Samaritan woman to whom Jesus revealed that he was the Messiah, who the Samaritans were also expecting, since they claimed theirs was the true religion of the ancient Israelites.

These are pivotal stories because they show that Jesus gives the voice of the gospel to women just as he gives the voice of the gospel to men. These stories also set the stage for the empty tomb where it was women who first encountered the resurrected Jesus and where the full gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus would unfold. So, yes, Jesus purposed in his mind to go through Samaria, because he had something to complete in Samaria.

The completion of this mission was so satisfying to him that he told his disciples, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” The conversation he had with this woman had an effect on Jesus that was profoundly different from his other encounters with men or women. This is the only scripture passage in the Bible where Jesus said that what had just happened was so meaningful to him that he felt that he had been fed. In other words, mission accomplished.

Verse 42 says “…we no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” These men first heard the words of Jesus from a woman, and then they heard the same message from Jesus himself.

Jesus is headed to the garden tomb and the final meeting with a woman who steps into the Christian era with the news “He is risen!”

(From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.)

Part 3. Destination – The Garden

There are four women to whom Jesus tells that he is the Messiah, the Canaanite woman being one of them. Most often we hear of her great faith, but when we concentrate on the faith of this woman, we diminish the message Jesus gave her. She was given the news from Jesus himself that he not only came for the Jews, but for the Gentiles also – and that meant her. Her story is found in both Matthew and Mark.

She asked Jesus to heal her daughter, but for some reason, he was not going to do it. Jesus told her “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.” She was a Gentile, and Jesus was telling her that he was sent to save the Jews only. But if that was the case, I would not be here writing this and you would not be reading it. So we see that while Jesus said that, it did not tell the whole story. And then by healing her daughter, he is showing her that he is also the Messiah of the Gentiles. That is Big News! We must never forget that this extraordinary news was told to a woman who had no husband nearby, or possibly not at all.

But right now, this woman did not need some idealistic prophecy of what was to happen in the future. Her daughter lay in bed very ill and she needed help now. So she argued with this man Jesus in whom she had placed her hope. ‘Help my daughter! Surely you have enough power within you to give a small portion to us Gentiles.’

She knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.” He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.” Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. (Common English Bible)

This story is very similar to the story of the first miracle when Jesus turned the water into wine. His mother (remember she had first argued with the angel Gabriel when told she was going to have a baby who would be the Messiah?) In the Wedding story Jesus says almost the same thing to his mother as he says to the Canaanite woman.

When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.” Jesus replied, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.” His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars used for the Jewish cleansing ritual, each able to hold about twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some from them and take it to the headwaiter,” and they did. The headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. (Common English Bible)

Just as his mother had asked for a special favor “even though the time was not right,” Jesus did as she asked. He does the same with this Gentile woman, showing that his right time had no beginning or ending.

Jesus told women his Good News, and he did not tell any one of those women to go home and ask her husband, brother, or father what he meant. He did not tell any one of these women not to tell the Good News of the Messiah. If he had, we would have never heard these stories. The Gentile woman went home and found her daughter healed. The disciples didn’t see that ending. She told it to whoever would listen. She had just heard the Messiah was coming to save the Gentiles also, how could she not tell it?

(From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.)

Part 2. Destination, the Garden

Jesus is headed to the garden, this time to the garden tomb of Lazarus, where something very important is about to happen. There is to be a resurrection, a small demonstration of what is to come.

It is a familiar story. You know it well. You know Lazarus died, Jesus wept, Lazarus came forth from the tomb. And you know that Martha and Mary had at one time been at odds with each other because Martha needed help in the kitchen and Mary was sitting down and not helping.

“Just the facts, ma’am.” But every story has a back story and that story is most often ignored because the significance does not fit with today’s male headship teaching.

Mary and Martha are the sisters of Lazarus. Apparently they live together. But it is not Lazarus who appears to be the head of the household, it is Martha. The stories in the Gospels do not attribute one word spoken by Lazarus, either before his death or afterwards. He does nothing to indicate he is the “head” of this family. Jesus speaks and interacts with Mary and Martha, and even this resurrection of Lazarus is overshadowed by Jesus’ talking with Martha, and his special notice of Mary.

Most of the people Jesus comes into contact with have only one story recorded in the Gospels. But Mary and Martha have at least four stories about their encounter with Jesus. When we first find Mary and Martha, Mary is at the feet of Jesus and Martha is fussing in the kitchen.

Mary was learning from the Teacher himself which was an enormously big deal in that time. It was said that for women to be taught the scriptures from men was similar to teaching them about sex – it just was not done. But here Mary is sitting at the Master’s feet alongside the men.

She is also the same Mary who, six days after the resurrection of her brother Lazarus, pours expensive alabaster oil on Jesus’ feet and dries his feet with her hair. Jesus rebukes those who seek to stop her by saying she is wasting the oil that could be sold to help feed the poor. He tells them “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”(Matthew 26:11-13).

Mary and Martha send for Jesus, but he waits until Lazarus is completely dead (it was believed by some Jews that the spirit hung around for three to seven days after death). It is Martha who runs to Jesus when he arrives after Lazarus’ death. If he had only gotten there earlier, Lazarus would have been healed but here he was dead and in the tomb and stinking for four days.

The Bible makes the point that “when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, while Mary remained in the house.” Mary remained at the house with the neighbors who came to comfort her. We know that Lazarus’ death and resurrection is one illustration Jesus wants to make, and we are going to see that there is one more connection to be made.

Here it is:

“After she said this, she went and spoke privately to her sister Mary, “The teacher is here and he’s calling for you.” Jesus was headed to the tomb where Lazarus lay but it was important that Mary, who had a hungering for the Scriptures and the things to come, be there when he brought Lazarus forth from the tomb. Thus, he said six days later, “she has prepared me for my burial.”

Just the facts, ma’am. Women had gone every step of the way with Jesus. They did not abandon him at the time of his trial; they did not deny him. Jesus is headed toward the tomb where at least two Marys will be the first to see him after his resurrection.

(From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.)

Destination the Garden – Part 1

You see, it began with the Garden of Eden and it culminated in the Garden of the Tomb and with the resurrection. That is no coincidence. And it is no coincidence that a woman was the one who was there when the Lord was revealed.

It was all leading up to that, of course, but they didn’t see it and I can bet your pastor does not see it either. The scriptures pointing the way have been used for other illustrations if they are mentioned at all. Rarely will you hear a sermon on the four women Jesus chose to lead the way. Remember these four women as we tell the story which you have already heard so many times in this book. This is important. Look at it. Jesus cannot get to the Garden Tomb until he has told these four women that he is the Messiah. On the following pages as you read again their stories, see how it all leads to the final story of Jesus and Mary at the resurrection.

But first, we must go back to that first Garden. This is a story the Jewish leaders and every household knew very well, just as we Christians know it and teach our children.

Man and woman were banned from the Garden. The man was to till the soil and the woman was to give life. Her name was now Eve which means “life” or “life-giving, or “mother of all who have life.”

Tears come into my eyes for all the Eves of the world. Eve wanted knowledge. She would be the one giving birth to future generations, but those same sons and daughters would curse her. God did not curse her. He cursed the snake and the ground that would be tilled, but he did not curse the man or the woman.

In “Destination, the Garden” we will see how Jesus, the “second Adam” demonstrates redemption to the woman. And we will learn that yet, again, those sons and daughters still curse the woman who gave them life. Are you still cursing the woman who gave you life?

An example of cursing the woman who gave you life is an action taken this week by the Southern Baptist Convention. They disfellowshipped one of their churches – Saddleback Church – because they had allowed a woman to be one of their pastors.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/southern-baptists-disfellowship-saddleback-church-over-female-pastor?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=benshapiro&fbclid=IwAR2DeGEzRrh8CKQmUiZBD9SFRZ_iSBxhrfqhImzzWo4s__obM5u2PRHG_V4

(Excerpt from my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle. Amazon.com/author/taylorshirley)

The Real Meaning of 1 Peter 3 is not Submission

If 1 Peter 3 is not about wives submitting to their husbands, then what does it mean? What message does Peter really have for women?

“Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear (1 Peter 3:1-7).”

This passage has been misused to tell women they must submit to their husbands. Some preachers even tell women that they must treat their husbands as Lord, because they say Sarah called Abraham “Lord.” But that is a misinterpretation and belittling of this passage. It is being used as a self-serving demand that women submit to their husbands, and, thus, to all men.

What is not taught is that this passage has a wonderful message to women today, just as it did to women in the First Century. The message is that they will be Mothers of a new nation. This time it would not be Israelites, but a new nation of Christians. These women are not just going to be daughters of Sarah, but they will be Mothers like Sarah. Being a daughter means that you are taking your cue from your mother, but being a Mother means that you are the one who is in charge.

When Peter said they would be Sarah’s daughters, he was telling them that the new life they had chosen as Christians was not going to be easy. Their husbands might not be Christians, and this would prove hard for them to live a Christian life when the father in the family did not live as a Christian. So, while it would be hard, if they do what is right (stay the course), and do not let fear control them, they will be birthing a new nation of Christians, and therefore they would be Mothers like Sarah. Instead of one Sarah, they would all be Sarahs!

The following paragraphs are from my book Dethroning Male Headship¹ found at the end of the chapter called “They asked for Sarah first.”

Some like to quote Peter when he said Sarah called Abraham “master” in Genesis 18:12, “So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ‘After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?’” The New International Version Bible uses the word “master,” unlike other translations that use the word “Lord.”

It is impossible to connect 1 Peter 3:1-6 to the words of Sarah found in Genesis to support the doctrine of wifely submission, but Bruce Ware, one of the members of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, attempts to do just that in his book, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: The Trinity as Theological Foundation for Family Ministry. Ware writes, “I find it astonishing that it is in this text, of all New Testament passages that teach on husband and wife relations, that the strongest language is used to describe a wife’s submission! Peter appealed to Sarah as an example and said that she “obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Pet 3:6a), indicating that they would be Sarah’s “children” if they fearlessly followed this example.”

Ware, who is a professor Christian Theology, has missed the beautiful promise of this passage. The promise is not that women would be Sarah’s children if they are submissive, but that they would become mothers like Sarah because they themselves would be founding a new nation of believers, not by giving birth in the physical sense, but by spreading the gospel message so people can be born again by the spirit.

To emphasize, Peter does NOT tell wives they are Sarah’s daughters if they submit to their husbands like Sarah did. What he DOES say was startling, and raised the hairs on their heads by its audacity. Peter tells these women that “like mother, like daughter” and just as their mother Sarah birthed a new nation, they, too, are birthing a new nation of believers.

We can interpret Peter’s words something like this, “That was the way it was done back in Sarah’s day, but things have changed. We are now under grace by faith, not under the law. You have done what is right in becoming Christ-followers, and are Sarah’s daughters—children of the freed woman—if you do not fear as you keep following Christ, and, like Sarah, you will birth this new nation of God’s people.”

Again, Paul says the same thing:

“Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother (Sarah)….Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman,” Galatians 4:21-26, 31.

1 Peter 3 contains a powerful promise of building a nation of believers that is for all time.

Twenty-first century Christian women are also children of the free woman, but some still choose to cling to Hagar by holding to a master/slave relationship with their husbands, and pastors still enforce this type of submission, even when they know it is wrong.

Sarah is mentioned four times in the New Testament, three of which are specifically about her becoming the mother of a nation. 1 Peter 3:6 is too, but the greater truth of it has been neglected. By passionately claiming the first part of the scripture that says wives must submit to their husbands, the promise it held for New Testament wives has been ignored. This particular reference to Sarah in 1 Peter 3:6 emphasizes the new covenant and has those new Christian women actively participating in the ministry of the gospel by birthing a nation of believers (1 Peter 3:6; Hebrews 11:11; Romans 4:19; Galatians 4:2-26, 31).

Wives, continue in your marriages even if your husbands are unbelievers, for by doing so, you will be like Sarah, mothers of a nation of believers.

Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr

Originally Posted on January 17, 2022 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

I am working this holiday, but my heart celebrates with those who honor Martin Luther King today. (An Update 1/16/2023. Martin Luther King, Jr Day is now a holiday at the church where I work.)

In 1961, I went to work for the Houston Lighting & Power Company. It was my first job, and immediately I encountered female discrimination. It surprised me because I had never even thought that the restrictions placed on women were discriminatory. They were, but I did not know it, similar to the way I was not fully aware of how blacks were discriminated against. To me, it was normal; it was just the way it was.

Of course I had heard of the marches and civil unrest that was taking place in the South, but it did not affect me. I remember the first time I saw a black person eating at a large department store food counter in downtown Houston. I also remember riding a Greyhound bus as a kid, and the blacks had to sit in the back. I remember “coloreds” water fountains. I remember picking cotton and the blacks picked in one field, while we whites picked in the other.

It was in the 1970s that I learned that women, white or black, could not get credit in their names. I still use the credit card that I was able to get in my own name, instead of my husband’s name. Women had a hard time getting jobs in the professional fields. For blacks and for women, it did not miraculously change overnight. It still is a hard fought battle.

So I honor Martin Luther King this day. He had a great effect on my life as a white female. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave blacks, and white women, the same rights that white men already had.

Another Year Lost for Women

originally posted on December 23, 2016 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

The birth of the greatest human rights activist, Jesus, is a good time to take stock of what Christians have become. Looking inward, will the church recognize when it is out of touch with the people it serves? When will the church recognize that it is out of touch with the Jesus it serves? “That’s medieval,” a man told me when I said that most of the churches around our city restricts what women can do. It may be medieval, but it is also 21^st century Christian America.

Jesus told the Jewish leaders in Matthew 23 that they were out of touch with the people they served.  He called them vipers and snakes because in their intent on following their interpretation of the letter of the law they were deadly to the people’s spirit.

Jesus was always about people. He told us to ‘do good unto others,’ and to ‘love one another.’ He told us not to boast of how religious we are in comparison to others who love God, and he told us not to Lord it over others.

Churches are emptying out across America and the younger generation cannot be bothered with church.  We must listen when they say “It’s medieval” when the church seeks to withhold service and responsibility from women just because they were born female. We must listen when we are told that our Christian practices seek to do harm. We must listen when our laws become vipers and snakes that destroy Christians who desire a closer relationship with our Lord.

It is 2022. A new year is on the horizon. Take stock of who you are and what you believe in the light of the greatest human rights activist who ever lived. It is Christmas. Do your actions reflect Hope, Peace, Joy and Love?

Advent Love – Its Personal

Franklin Graham has it wrong. God did not intervene in the selection of this president. Jesus was not concerned about governments, either Jewish or Roman. Jesus was concerned about the heart of the people. As we know from history, the heart of the people can be very hard and unforgiving, lacking justice and mercy. It is doubtful that God would have given this as a Christmas present to us.

We are one week before we celebrate the birth of Jesus. At the time of Jesus’ birth, the Jews were looking for a Messiah who would bring the kingdom of God to earth.

The great hope of Israel centered in the kingdom of God which would change the course of history by inaugurating the period of justice, peace and prosperity announced by the prophets, the more strenuously since the bitter experience of the deportation to Babylon. (The Jewish world at the time of Christ)

They wanted justice, peace and prosperity. Who doesn’t want that? The problem with wanting justice and peace is twofold: 1) we want to determine what justice is; 2) we want to determine what peace is.

When I think of justice, I immediately think of women’s equality and how women have been mistreated, marginalized, abused, and discounted by government and by religion, and how that continues today. I think of homosexuals who have also suffered greatly and still do. So it is with trepidation that I look at our newly evangelically-voted for government. The people chosen to represent the nation have a history of misogyny against women and hatred against homosexuals. Justice?  I see no way to justice.

When I think of peace, I think of living peacefully in our own country. My children were born during the great Civil Rights demonstrations and conflict. I was fearful for my children being born in such an unsettling time. As a mother, I desire peace. Sure, there are times I would like to get even, strike back, and win above all. But as a mother whose son has gone into a battleground in Iraq, I don’t want to see other mothers suffer during wars. So, yes, I desire peace.

Jesus did not come to change Jewish government or Roman government. He came to change the hearts of people. Through love. He said it himself “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Love – it’s personal.

I originally wrote this in 2016 and it is a repost. It is now 2022 and the year is coming to an end. What has changed? What did you do this year to promote love towards people? Did your heart change in thinking about women’s equality or gay rights? The two are tied together, you know. Because when we feel we can hate one group because the Bible says so, then we can restrict the other group because “the Bible says so.”

Advent Joy – Bringing Joy

It is nearing Christmas Day and the bundle of joy – the Babe in the manger – will be making His appearance. All month long we have decorated our churches and our homes, our cities and offices in joyful celebration. We have gone caroling, listened to cantatas and hummed Christmas songs in our cars.

But it is not all joy. When Mary was told that she would give birth, this young unwed mother surely endured sneers, teasing and cruelty at the hands of the religious folk. I fear we have not changed as much as we would like to say we have.

“A woman’s greatest calling is in being a wife and mother” a young Christian woman was near tears when telling me what her women friends at church said to her.

There was no joy in her voice as she related those words to me. She was married but could not have children. Unlike Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth, there would be no bundle of joy from a barren womb.

But here she was, in this 21^st Century being told that she was missing out on God’s call to be a mother and by inference, was an incomplete woman. Just like religious women have been made to feel for centuries.

Jesus was born into a world much like ours today. Wars, turbulence, anger, helplessness, sickness, poverty and greedy governmental control. Yet we hear the proclamation “Joy to the World! The Lord has come!”

We are Christians and it high time we began acting like it. This Babe came to tell us “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Do good to those who hurt you. Don’t be the one who is hurting others. Don’t destroy their joy but bring joy to them.

2022 is almost over. What joy have you brought to the world? Have you told a woman that her worth is in giving birth? Have you stepped on women in order to elevate men? Or have you told women that they themselves are joy, made complete by their Creator, the Lord God!

Advent Hope – Groundhog Day all over again

Each year the liturgical calendar gets reset and we begin again with where it began. We know what is going to happen to Jesus at Easter, but each November we begin by retelling the story from the beginning, all over again.  We get a new chance like Phil the weatherman did in the movie Groundhog Day. We hope this year we get it right.

Phil (Bill Murray), a weatherman, is out to cover the annual emergence of the groundhog from its hole. He gets caught in a blizzard that he didn’t predict and finds himself trapped in a time warp. He is doomed to relive the same day over and over again until he gets it right. After indulging in hedonism and committing suicide numerous times, he begins to re-examine his life and priorities.

Like Phil, Christianity has been through its periods of hedonism and suicidal tendencies. In its hedonistic period, Christians have tried to force Christianity down the throats of others by the Crusades. Christians have murdered thousands during the Inquisitions,  witch hunts, slavery, and by preaching hell and brimstone revivals in the United States.

Today we are in Christianity’s suicidal period. We are killing the hearts and desires of Christians and non-Christians alike with our hate for our fellow man.  Right now many people are declaring they no longer want to be called an evangelical Christian because the very term indicates that we are a restrictive, non-loving Christian whose desires should rule our government and churches. A nation that has chosen for president a man who either assaults women or who speaks as an adolescent boy who brags of doing so and who has actually had assault charges filed against him by his wife and others; a man who chooses another such man to be his Chief of Staff.

In this suicidal period of Christianity, we have renewed our desire that women be controlled by husbands, men of the church, and all males. It is women who get the kids up for church each Sunday morning. It is women who will take their children to church and who do most of the Sunday school teaching in that church. It is women who are beginning to realize that their church does not love them as much as they love their church. When you kill off the ones who bring the children, you have committed religious suicide.

Such as our world has always been, it is now. But here we are. Beginning another Advent season where we are looking forward to the birth of a Baby who we will learn has come to turn the world upside down.  A Savior, the Christ, who will reveal to us that we are to love one another.

It is Advent – Groundhog Day all over again. We can hope.

It is 2022. What hope are you bringing to the church?

Originally Posted on November 25, 2016 by bwebaptistwomenforequality

Methodists turning complementarian?

Following is a post I wrote on June 7, 2014, and now it is happening. The split has started and 117 churches in Florida left United Methodist Church and became their own new Global Methodist Church which is far more conservative.

June 7, 2014. Who would have thought it? Of course the seeds are there just waiting to germinate. And germinate they will.

According to the Houston Chronicle (June 1, 2014, Methodist churches face split over gay issues), they are about to split in two.

Whenever conservative Christians – Methodists or any other denomination – get together, women suffer.

Christian conservatism is a three-legged stool 1) gays; 2) women; 3) Bible inerrancy. These fundamentalists do not stand on two legs.

This split is about Bible inerrancy, ordaining gay clergy, and performing same-sex marriages. Gays will neither benefit nor suffer from this division into two Methodists groups, because they already can get married in many states whether the church allows it or not. It will be women who suffer, by a loss of churches willing to accept a woman pastor and by marriage seminars teaching male headship. This conservative (fundamentalist) group will begin with denouncing gays and same-sex marriages, and then you wil find they are rejecting women pastors.

Methodists have within their membership those who believe in male headship and this group will identify with those other denominations that teach against homosexuality and who also deny women equality to preach or pastor.

And then Methodists will be complementarian in their teaching and beliefs. And that is what this group wants. Read what one of their members, Therrell, said:

“Our churches long for the day of being able to unite with like-minded Christians who focus on sharing the Good News of Jesus and help people to be transformed by His salvation,” Therrell said in the WCA-Florida statement on Facebook.

Openly gay pastors are a rarity, even among those who accept gay pastors. However, there are many gay pastors among evangelical fundamental Christians and Catholics. None of these denominations affirm gay pastors, but they are there. Conservative churches know they have gay pastors within their churches, but do not make an issue of it until something happens. Thus, there will continue to be male gay pastors in the split-off Methodist churches. But you can count on it, these split-off churches will not continue to accept female pastors.

I urge all Methodists to take action. Now is not the time to sit and wait.

Stepping into the Christian Era

He is Risen and now what? Let’s not be too hasty lest we pack Jesus away with the plastic Easter eggs. In the last post, Part 5. Destination, the Garden, we saw how Jesus went out of his way to tell women that he was the Messiah. As we will see, there was a reason for this.

Jesus has been called “the new Adam.” That first Adam has been the bane of all mankind and so has Eve. But the Resurrection changed everything. Here was the new Adam – a spirit that gives life.

“So it is also written, The first human, Adam, became a living person, and the last Adam became a spirit that gives life.” (1 Cor. 15:45 CEB). In Bible language, this is what is known as typology. It is a doctrine of theological types; especially one holding that things in Christian belief are prefigured or symbolized by things in the Old Testament.

Let’s look again at that garden.  There is Jesus and there is Mary Magdalene. Since Jesus is the new “Adam,” Mary is the new “Eve.” She is the first to witness this new Adam. He called her by her name, thus naming her. She is a freed woman, no longer to be cursed by manmade rules and restrictions. She is freed of the stigma placed upon her by mankind. But it won’t last. Because whenever humans can place a stigma, they will, and they did.

Just as it was not a coincidence that Jesus told the Jewish Mary of Bethany that she was welcomed into the presence of the Master’s teaching; Jesus told the gentile woman that he had also come to be Messiah of the gentiles which included her; Jesus told the woman at the well that he was the Messiah whom the Samaritans had been expecting (believing that they were the true faith); it was not a coincidence that Mary Magdalene was in the garden to see the Resurrected Christ – the new Adam. Everything was leading up to this.

Genesis begins in a garden. And here we are again, in a garden where the Apostle Paul says “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The new Adam and the new Eve. And just like the original Eve, this woman Mary Magdalene who was cleansed of all her sins, remained under the curse of man. Not God, but man. So do all of us women who have come after her.

There are no more gardens. We have stepped into the Christian era.

From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.

Part 5. Destination, the Garden

Chaos. Everybody was running here and there. It is no wonder the stories got mixed up. Some thought they saw Peter and John go into the tomb, some thought they had not arrived yet. Some saw angels, or something that looked like angels. Some saw the guards lying facedown and scrambling up with worried looks and making hasty decisions of what to tell the authorities.

“Where is he?” You can hear the determination in her voice as Mary Magdalene confronts someone she thinks is the gardener. “Just tell me where he is and I WILL GO GET HIM!” This is not some weak woman speaking. She has come to the tomb prepared to roll away a heavy stone, but now all she sees is a gaping hole and the body of Jesus is gone. She is crying, yes, but these are tears of frustration and determination. She was going to make this right. Weak people say “help me” while strong people say “I will do it.”

“Tell me where he is! I will go get him!”

Chaos. So many different accounts of this one event. But there was one thing they all were clear on. It was a woman who Jesus first revealed himself to.

There were men around – the guards who were scared half to death – and possibly Peter and John. But they didn’t get the news. It was a woman. Like all of Jesus’ proclamations, male headship played no part in this resurrection story.

So we have finally arrived in the garden and the world has been turned upside down. Where do we go from here? Do we leave Mary and the other women beside an empty grave? Yes, we do. Not as Jesus did, but as pastors and preachers and other women have determined we should do. Mary Magdalene is mentioned 12 times in relation to Jesus’ death and resurrection. After that she is no longer mentioned. Why not? This woman to whom Jesus made a personal appearance – bypassing all the others around the tomb – is left there.

I was sitting in a doctor’s office while both men and women sat around me, using their iPhones or devices. Tears came into my eyes and I wanted to shout to all there “This is the 21^st century for both men and women! Why does the church work so hard to keep women in the 1^st Century?” Because the Bible says so? Where?

Where does Jesus say that women must submit to their husbands? Where does Jesus say that women cannot be in authority over a man? It is not there, my friends. We are called Christians because we follow Christ and not some 1^st century societal customs that empowered men over women.

We have come to the garden by way of Mary of Bethany who was a Jewish woman welcomed to sit and learn from the Master himself. We have come to the garden by way of the Gentile woman who learned that Jesus was the Messiah for gentiles which included her. We have come to the garden by way of the Samaritan woman who believed that hers was the true religion, and here was the Messiah just as they expected. We have come to the garden by way of Mary Magdalene who declared she would go herself and find Jesus until he said her name and she knew he was the resurrected Christ.

We are at the garden. Who is going to stop you from going and telling?

From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.

Part 4. Destination, the Garden

If the first thing you think of when you remember the woman at the well is “the man you are living with now is not your husband,” then you have missed the whole point of Jesus’ visit to this Samaritan woman.

The Danvers Statement of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Affirmation #9 says: “With half the world’s population outside the reach of indigenous evangelism; with countless other lost people in those societies that have heard the gospel; with the stresses and miseries of sickness, malnutrition, homelessness, illiteracy, ignorance, aging, addiction, crime, incarceration, neuroses, and loneliness, no man or woman who feels a passion from God to make His grace known in word and deed need ever live without a fulfilling ministry for the glory of Christ and the good of this fallen world.”

No matter what shape the world is in, the writers of The Danvers Statement would never have chosen the woman at the well to be the instrument God used to win lost people to Christ.

But Jesus did.

Everyone knows her story. In fact, hers is one of the longest detailed stories of an event in the New Testament. It was her story. She told it to everyone who would listen. This man she had just met at the well knew that she had had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband.

Jesus was not judging her for that. He was offering her something that no man could offer a woman. He was offering her living water—from a well that would never run dry. And he told her that he was the source of this living water.

This was a woman experienced in the ways of men, and she knew this conversation was different from any she had ever had. She was certainly not the one who would be expected to announce the news that prophecy had been fulfilled and that the long-awaited Messiah had finally arrived. No one would even listen to a woman proclaiming this momentous event, would they? But for some reason, Jesus chose her to reveal his true identity.

She took that message and ran with it.

It was Jesus who brought up the subject of living water. He told her that if she drank from the water he gave, she would never be thirsty again.

She wanted that. She said she did not want to keep coming to the well to draw water. She was probably teasing him at that point as she had no idea what he was talking about. Then Jesus did something surprising. He told her to go call her husband, and then to come back.

Aha! Finally Jesus brings male headship into the conversation! “Go, call your husband and come back,” Jesus said.

The woman answered, “I have no husband.”

Was Jesus was surprised at this? Did he ask her to go call her husband just to embarrass her? No, its significance is greater than her confession that she was not married to the man with whom she was living. She was worthy in her own right, as a woman, to be told directly by him that he was the Messiah. They engaged in a theological discussion. This woman was not learning in silence. And Jesus did not rebuke her for it. She talked back and told him that she could see that he was a prophet. She declared “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

And he did explain—right then and there—to the woman at the well, a woman who did not have a husband to tell her if what she was hearing was right or wrong. She heard, she accepted, she told.

This story of the woman at the well is found in John 4:4-42 and begins by saying, “Now he had to go through Samaria.” It is best translated that “he purposed in his mind” to go through Samaria, because the Jews had found a way, even though it was inconvenient, to avoid Samaria. They thought they were better than these poor cousins, the Samaritans, and for a Jew to deliberately go through Samaria was unusual.

There was something in Samaria that Jesus needed to do in order to complete his earthly work.

With this story of the Woman at the Well, we see how the picture of Jesus is coming together.

The Jewish woman, Mary of Bethany, who Jesus permitted to sit at his feet right beside the men, and learn at a time when learning scripture was forbidden to women

The Gentile woman to whom Jesus revealed that he was not sent only to Israel, but to all people, which included her.

The Samaritan woman to whom Jesus revealed that he was the Messiah, who the Samaritans were also expecting, since they claimed theirs was the true religion of the ancient Israelites.

These are pivotal stories because they show that Jesus gives the voice of the gospel to women just as he gives the voice of the gospel to men. These stories also set the stage for the empty tomb where it was women who first encountered the resurrected Jesus and where the full gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus would unfold. So, yes, Jesus purposed in his mind to go through Samaria, because he had something to complete in Samaria.

The completion of this mission was so satisfying to him that he told his disciples, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” The conversation he had with this woman had an effect on Jesus that was profoundly different from his other encounters with men or women. This is the only scripture passage in the Bible where Jesus said that what had just happened was so meaningful to him that he felt that he had been fed. In other words, mission accomplished.

Verse 42 says “…we no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” These men first heard the words of Jesus from a woman, and then they heard the same message from Jesus himself.

Jesus is headed to the garden tomb and the final meeting with a woman who steps into the Christian era with the news “He is risen!”

From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.

Part 3. Destination, the Garden

Part 3. Destination, the garden

There are four women to whom Jesus tells that he is the Messiah, the Canaanite woman being one of them. Most often we hear of her great faith, but when we concentrate on the faith of this woman, we diminish the message Jesus gave her. She was given the news from Jesus himself that he not only came for the Jews, but for the Gentiles also – and that meant her. Her story is found in both Matthew and Mark.

She asked Jesus to heal her daughter, but for some reason, he was not going to do it. Jesus told her “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.” She was a Gentile, and Jesus was telling her that he was sent to save the Jews only. But if that was the case, I would not be here writing this and you would not be reading it. So we see that while Jesus said that, it did not tell the whole story. And then by healing her daughter, he is showing her that he is also the Messiah of the Gentiles. That is Big News! We must never forget that this extraordinary news was told to a woman who had no husband nearby, or possibly not at all.

But right now, this woman did not need some idealistic prophecy of what was to happen in the future. Her daughter lay in bed very ill and she needed help now. So she argued with this man Jesus in whom she had placed her hope. ‘Help my daughter! Surely you have enough power within you to give a small portion to us Gentiles.’

She knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.” He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.” Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. (Common English Bible)

This story is very similar to the story of the first miracle when Jesus turned the water into wine. His mother (remember she had first argued with the angel Gabriel when told she was going to have a baby who would be the Messiah?) In the Wedding story Jesus says almost the same thing to his mother as he says to the Canaanite woman.

When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.” Jesus replied, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.” His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars used for the Jewish cleansing ritual, each able to hold about twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some from them and take it to the headwaiter,” and they did. The headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. (Common English Bible)

Just as his mother had asked for a special favor “even though the time was not right,” Jesus did as she asked. He does the same with this Gentile woman, showing that his right time had no beginning or ending.

Jesus told women his Good News, and he did not tell any one of those women to go home and ask her husband, brother, or father what he meant. He did not tell any one of these women not to tell the Good News of the Messiah. If he had, we would have never heard these stories. The Gentile woman went home and found her daughter healed. The disciples didn’t see that ending. She told it to whoever would listen. She had just heard the Messiah was coming to save the Gentiles also, how could she not tell it?

From my book: Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle.

Part 2. Destination, the Garden

Jesus is headed to the garden, this time to the garden tomb of Lazarus, where something very important is about to happen. There is to be a resurrection, a small demonstration of what is to come.

It is a familiar story. You know it well. You know Lazarus died, Jesus wept, Lazarus came forth from the tomb. And you know that Martha and Mary had at one time been at odds with each other because Martha needed help in the kitchen and Mary was sitting down and not helping.

“Just the facts, ma’am.” But every story has a back story and that story is most often ignored because the significance does not fit with today’s male headship teaching.

Mary and Martha are the sisters of Lazarus. Apparently they live together. But it is not Lazarus who appears to be the head of the household, it is Martha. The stories in the Gospels do not attribute one word spoken by Lazarus, either before his death or afterwards. He does nothing to indicate he is the “head” of this family. Jesus speaks and interacts with Mary and Martha, and even this resurrection of Lazarus is overshadowed by Jesus’ talking with Martha, and his special notice of Mary.

Most of the people Jesus comes into contact with have only one story recorded in the Gospels. But Mary and Martha have at least four stories about their encounter with Jesus. When we first find Mary and Martha, Mary is at the feet of Jesus and Martha is fussing in the kitchen.

Mary was learning from the Teacher himself which was an enormously big deal in that time. It was said that for women to be taught the scriptures from men was similar to teaching them about sex – it just was not done. But here Mary is sitting at the Master’s feet alongside the men.

She is also the same Mary who, six days after the resurrection of her brother Lazarus, pours expensive alabaster oil on Jesus’ feet and dries his feet with her hair. Jesus rebukes those who seek to stop her by saying she is wasting the oil that could be sold to help feed the poor. He tells them “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”(Matthew 26:11-13).

Mary and Martha send for Jesus, but he waits until Lazarus is completely dead (it was believed by some Jews that the spirit hung around for three to seven days after death). It is Martha who runs to Jesus when he arrives after Lazarus’ death. If he had only gotten there earlier, Lazarus would have been healed but here he was dead and in the tomb and stinking for four days.

The Bible makes the point that “when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, while Mary remained in the house.” Mary remained at the house with the neighbors who came to comfort her. We know that Lazarus’ death and resurrection is one illustration Jesus wants to make, and we are going to see that there is one more connection to be made.

Here it is:

“After she said this, she went and spoke privately to her sister Mary, “The teacher is here and he’s calling for you.” Jesus was headed to the tomb where Lazarus lay but it was important that Mary, who had a hungering for the Scriptures and the things to come, be there when he brought Lazarus forth from the tomb. Thus, he said six days later, “she has prepared me for my burial.”

Just the facts, ma’am. Women had gone every step of the way with Jesus. They did not abandon him at the time of his trial; they did not deny him. Jesus is headed toward the tomb where several Marys will be the first to see him after his resurrection.

From my book: Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Availabe on Amazon in print and Kindle.

Part 1. Destination – the Garden

You see, it began with the Garden of Eden and it culminated in the Garden of the Tomb and with the resurrection. That is no coincidence. And it is no coincidence that a woman was the one who was there when the Lord was revealed.

It was all leading up to that, of course, but they didn’t see it and I can bet your pastor does not see it either. The scriptures pointing the way have been used for other illustrations if they are mentioned at all. Rarely will you hear a sermon on the four women Jesus chose to lead the way. Remember these four women as we tell the story which you have already heard so many times in this book. This is important. Look at it. Jesus cannot get to the Garden Tomb until he has told these four women that he is the Messiah. On the following pages as you read again their stories, see how it all leads to the final story of Jesus and Mary at the resurrection.

But first, we must go back to that first Garden. This is a story the Jewish leaders and every household knew very well, just as we Christians know it and teach our children.

Man and woman were banned from the Garden. The man was to till the soil and the woman was to give life. Her name was now Eve which means “life” or “life-giving, or “mother of all who have life.”

Tears come into my eyes for all the Eves of the world. Eve wanted knowledge. She would be the one giving birth to future generations, but those same sons and daughters would curse her. God did not curse her. He cursed the snake and the ground that would be tilled, but he did not curse the man or the woman.

In “Destination, the Garden” we will see how Jesus, the “second Adam” demonstrates redemption to the woman. And we will learn that yet, again, those sons and daughters still curse the woman who gave them life. Are you still cursing the woman who gave you life?

From my book Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood. Available in print and Kindle on Amazon.

The Powerful Message of 1 Peter 3:1-6

Male headship is dethroned when Peter told Christian women that they will be like Sarah, mothers of a nation of believers. The beautiful promise of this passage is not that women would be Sarah’s children if they are submissive, but that they would become mothers like Sarah because they themselves would be founding a new nation of believers, not by giving birth in the physical sense, but by spreading the gospel message so people can be born again by the spirit.

To emphasize, Peter does NOT tell wives they are Sarah’s daughters if they submit to their husbands like Sarah did. What he DOES say was startling, and raised the hairs on their heads by its audacity. 

Peter tells these women that “like mother, like daughter” and just as their mother Sarah birthed a new nation, they, too, are birthing a new nation of believers.

We can interpret Peter’s words something like this, “That was the way it was done back in Sarah’s day, but things have changed. We are now under grace by faith, not under the law. You have done what is right in becoming Christ-followers, and are Sarah’s daughters—children of the freed woman—if you do not fear as you keep following Christ, and, like Sarah, you will birth this new nation of God’s people.” 

Again, Paul says the same thing: “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.

“These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother (Sarah)….Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman,” Galatians 4:21-26, 31.

1 Peter 3 contains a powerful promise of building a nation of believers that is for all time.

Twenty-first century Christian women are also children of the free woman, but some still choose to cling to Hagar by holding to a master/slave relationship with their husbands, and pastors still enforce this type of submission, even when they know it is wrong.

Sarah is mentioned four times in the New Testament, three of which are specifically about her becoming the mother of a nation. 1 Peter 3:6 is too, but the greater truth of it has been neglected.

By passionately claiming the first part of the scripture that says wives must submit to their husbands, the promise it held for New Testament wives has been ignored.

This particular reference to Sarah in 1 Peter 3:6 emphasizes the new covenant and has those new Christian women actively participating in the ministry of the gospel by birthing a nation of believers (1 Peter 3:6; Hebrews 11:11; Romans 4:19; Galatians 4:2-26, 31).