So, is it or isn't it?

Religious feminists - no telling where they'll lurch next. Because I often let curiosity get the better of me when I should know better, I checked on the current issue of a certain organization's e-newsletter. Hunh. I thought they disliked it when patriarchalists called the issue a core one touching upon the heart of the Gospel (faulty anthropology leads to faulty theology and all that, right?). But no. When they decide to, it's OK to call it a "primary issue".

When patriarchalists teach what the Church has always taught, they are making God out to be "illogical and unjust". Heaven forbid we should cross the religious feminists path of logical argumentation. The problem, however and always, is that religious feminists never present what the Church teaches on these matters. It's always some aberrant crackpot who teaches that Eve was responsible for "all the sin in the world" or that women can never hold any position of responsibility in the church, or that God has already decided women have nothing of interest to say. So religious feminists can dismiss any old crackpot claiming to speak for God as a patriarchalist, but don't play on a level field - if a religious feminist celebrates her lesbian lover she is not really a religious feminist. They get to define what is authentic on both sides of that fence (sorry to the mixed metaphors).

I am encouraged by one thing, however. I think the religious feminists are finally recognizing what the battle is really all about, what truly divides us:

What is interesting about worldviews is that a corruption in one element creates a disruption in the other elements. . . . [I won't bore you with the bogeyman slavery analogy she launches into at this point]

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Does the shared leadership and authority of women and men advance a more biblical world view? Does it promote the gospel and our capacity to reflect Jesus to the world? Katharine Bushnell, in the early 1900s, said that Christians must assess women's capacity for service in the same way we assess men's -- not based on the fall, but on our atonement in Christ. to do otherwise is to do violence to the gospel, to which all of Scripture and history point.

We finally agree. The authority of women and men is a gospel issue. Now if we could only agree how authority works out differently for women than it does for men.