In this episode we recap and reflect on the gender series that we’ve been doing since mid-November 2020. The series spans eighteen episodes, beginning with “Paul & Masculinity with Grace Emmett” (November 11, 2020) and ending with “The Great Sex Rescue with Sheila Wray Gregoire” (March 10, 2020). As we explain in this conversation, we regard every episode in between these two episodes as being part of the series, including the ones on racial matters,...
In this episode we discuss the concept of “Biblical Womanhood” from a historical perspective. To do so we are joined by Dr. Beth Allison Barr, who is Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of History at Baylor University (Waco, TX), and the author of the forthcoming book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (with Brazos). In her new book, Dr. Barr contends that “Biblical Womanhood” isn’t...
On this episode we discuss various topics related to gender and the Trinity, including: the gendered language about the family of God (i.e. “sons”) and the gendered language for the persons of the Trinity (i.e. Father and Son), the representation of God with maternal imagery in the Bible, and the topic of the Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son (EFS), which is a proxy discussion for a complementarian approach to gender. For this discussion we...
Continuing our conversation on gender dynamics in Scripture and the Church, in this podcast episode we talk about the binary of Complementarianism and Egalitarianism regarding how to conceive of the relationship of men and women in marriage and in the church. Has the entrenchment of the binary led us to miss aspects of the text? For this conversation, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, and Grace Sangalang Ng are joined by Dr. Michelle Lee-Barnewall, Associate...
Carrying on with our series on gender and the Bible, Amber Bowen and Dr. John Anthony Dunne are joined by Aimee Byrd, who is the author of several books, including Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Zondervan Academic, 2020). In this episode Aimee explains that, despite what one might suspect from her outspoken detractors, her book is ultimately about discipleship. She critiques the movement that appeals to “biblical manhood and womanhood” as truncating biblical gender...
Continuing our discussion on gender from last week with Grace Emmett (“Paul & Masculinity”), we turn to look at the relationship between preaching and gender. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, Rev. Daniel Parham, and Dr. Chris Porter reflect on this topic from the vantage point of our different cultural and ecclesial contexts. Rather than debate particular texts and their meaning in a prescriptive manner, we discuss how various cultural factors...
Kicking off a discussion on gender in the Bible and how this syncs up the Western Church and broader culture, Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Dr. Logan Williams chat with Grace Emmett, a PhD Candidate in New Testament at King’s College, London, who recently submitted a thesis entitled, “Becoming A Man: Unmanly/Manly Self-Presentation in the Pauline Epistles.” In this episode we discuss masculinity as presented in the Pauline epistles and reflected in ancient...
Complementarianism. Evangelical churches embrace this term to define their position on women and church leadership. But we lack a shared vision of what this might look like in our churches. The idea of complementarianism is rooted in the principle that men and women are better together, or in more Biblical language, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). Complementarian churches are confronted with a troubling irony then, because when it comes...
I have a simple question for my Complimentarian friends. The debate about women in ministry is well-worn and most of us know the key texts to discuss, the key theological paradigms that are debated, etc. The two camps are not entirely monolithic however, and there is plenty of room for nuanced positions and even some differing approaches to exegetical, theological, and practical issues on both sides. I’m sure we can all agree that there are good...
This conversation is, for the most part, generally toxic. It often results in two events: 1) The experience and input of women is generally ignored, disregarded, or chalked up to “merely anecdotal evidence”. 2) There are generally men who get defensive in the conversation. Perhaps a closer look at these three issues are necessary as most of the conversations I have been a part of, especially this past semester, have been nothing short of a...
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