The CBE Scroll

Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost has a new post up this morning taking on the whole idea that masculinity has anything to do with being a faithful Jesus-follower. After discussing his “manly” bona fides (former Marine, gun-owner, John Wayne fan, etc.) he says:

In other words, there is some evidence that I am—or at least once was—a fairly “manly man.” I’m also a devout Bible-believing Christian. But for the life of me, I can’t discern how the two are connected, much less why one is necessary for the other. Yet that is the impression I often get when I read about the “feminization of the church” and the move to provide young Christian men with “masculine” role models.

He then takes on Mark Driscoll, the founder of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, as a major proponent of this kind of thinking. But idolizing Dog the Bounty Hunter—apparently he’s a Christian—as some kind of role model for young men just doesn’t cut it. Carter concludes,

But young men don’t need a Jesus who strolls like the Duke, squints like Eastwood, and snarls like Rumsfeld. They don’t need Jesus the wrestler or Jesus the warrior. They just need Jesus the Savior.

The Evangelical Outpost has a very large readership, and I would imagine a fair number of those readers take for granted the pink-and-blue theology that Carter chastises. I’ll be interested in seeing the comments that are sure to ensue.

You would think that those liberal folks who send their daughters to their liberal mainline denominational seminaries where females fill over 50 percent of the seats would have been long successful in getting them pastorates in local churches. In a front page article in the New York Times on August 26, Neela Banerjee writes in an article called, “Clergywomen Find Hard Path to Bigger Pulpit,” that such women fill no more than 3 percent of the pulpits of churches over 350 members. Moving women into positions in denominational hierarchies and in seminaries seems easier than landing desirable senior pastorates. For example, women were elected this year to lead the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church USA.

Evangelical churches, many of which do not ordain women, the writer says, force some women leaders to leave for other denominations that will accept them as ministers. Only one percent of conservative Protestant churches hire a woman, according to the article.

Getting church boards to hire women is a most difficult task. A man in one congregation covered his eyes whenever the woman pastor preached, and a co(male)-pastor admitted he could not focus on what his female colleague was saying when she preached. “When a senior pastor is consulted about whom he would like to succeed him, there aren’t any women on those lists,” the author quotes a female pastor as saying. “The good-old-boy network starts there.”